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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 




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LIFE AND 
SERVICE 


BY 

Rev. Lewis Powell, D.D. 

PASTOR FIRST METHODIST CHURCH 
HOPKINSVILLE, KY. 


Nashville, Term. 

Dallas, Tex.; Richmond, Va. 

Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South 

Smith & Lamar, Agents 

1918 



"f6 



COPYRIGHT, 1918 

BY 
SMITH & LAMAR 



©CI. A 

SEP 16 WW 



REV. PAUL S. POWELL, A.M., B.D. 

who never disobeyed me, who 
never deceived me, who nev- 
er told me a lie, who from a 
baby has known the Holy 
Scriptures, who was converted 
at his mother's knees at the 
age of five, and whose life is 
consecrated to Christ, this book 
is affectionately dedicated 



FOREWORD. 

No one who accepts the Bible as the Word of 
God and who observes the trend of religious 
thought and life can well remain silent at this criti- 
cal time in the history of Christianity. The very 
citadel of religion is being attacked, and a battle 
more fierce than the gigantic struggle now going on 
in Picardy is being waged, while the outcome is 
far more vital to humanity and to the Church uni- 
versal than the great European war. 

The skeptical attitude of most college and uni- 
versity men; the growing sympathy of educated 
preachers for higher criticism and its methods of 
interpretation; the general drift from the plain, 
literal meaning of God's Word ; the calling in ques- 
tion by many of the fundamental doctrines of the 
gospel ; the blind acceptance of the untenable postu- 
lates of evolution; the output of German kultur; 
that criticism parading in the name of science — 
these provoked the writing and publishing of this 
book, Life and Service. 

It is not only a protest against these offenses, but 

(5) 



6 Life and Service. 

it is a record of the writer's unwavering faith in the 
God-breathed, infallible Word of God, which con- 
tains all things necessary to salvation. It is also a 
purpose to set forth those principles by means of 
which life may articulate itself with service to 
humanity and to> humanity's Redeemer. 

The material for this book has been largely pre- 
pared at sundry times and for certain occasions. 
One of the chapters was prepared to be read be- 
fore the Investigators' Club at Owensboro, Ky., 
four years ago-, and was received by the Investiga- 
tors with a good deal of interest and commendation. 
Two of the chapters were read before the Athe- 
naeum Club of Hopkins ville, Ky., during the past 
year at intervals of four or five months, and both 
papers were enthusiastically received, some of my 
brother club members expressing the hope of seeing 
the papers in a more permanent form. 

I have a number of distinguished friends who 
have urged me to write, but writing was never an 
easy thing for me to do. However, during the past 
winter I have done a good deal of writing, and 
some of the material I had on hand suited the pur- 
pose had in mind to be accomplished in publishing 
this book. All the material has been worked over, 
and the papers I am using in the making of this 



Foreword 7 

volume logically fall into place and pertinently con- 
tribute to the message I wish to give to the public. 

I am not offering this book to the public because 
my friends have asked me to give out some message 
in this form, nor because my brothers of my literary 
club have asked me to put the messages I have given 
them into a more permanent form, but because I 
am under a feeling of compulsion. I believe I am 
led of the Spirit in publishing this message of Life 
and Sevrice. I pray that every one who takes the 
time to read these pages may catch the vision and 
receive the message. 

I am particularly anxious to be of help to the 
rank and file of young preachers and to public 
school teachers. On the minds of these two classes 
the impression has been made that there is an ir- 
reconcilable conflict between the Bible and science, 
which I think it is plainly shown in the first chapter, 
"Things True and False in Evolution," is not the 
case. 

The first three chapters deal largely with scientif- 
ic, philosophical, and doctrinal matters; but they 
discuss the vital relationship of faith and practice. 
The last six chapters are designedly practical, and 
upon the observance of the truths which they pre- 



8 Life and Service. 

sent depends our usefulness in the kingdom and 
patience of Jesus Christ. 

I pray the blessing of God upon this little book 
and upon every one who reads it. 

Lewis Powell. 

Hopkinsville, Ky., April is, 1918. 



CONTENTS. 

Introduction n 

Chapter I. 
Things True and False in Evolution 15 

Chapter II. 
The Origin of Man S3 

Chapter III. 
Mind Over Matter; or, Suggestive Therapeutics 75 

Chapter IV. 
The Law of Service 94 

Chapter V. 
Character-Building 114 

Chapter VI. 
Home-Building 139 

Chapter VII. 
Financing the Kingdom — The Tithe Law 163 

Chapter VIII. 
Evangelism ; or, Winning the Lost 181 

Chapter IX. 
John Wesley in Social Service 192 



(9) 



INTRODUCTION. 

There are certain words which have a cumula- 
tive significance. As the realities for which they 
stand are brought into fuller view or receive em- 
phasis from new conjunctions of thought and ac- 
tion, these words come to* be more effective in 
awakening consciousness and stimulating effort. 
Life is to-day emphasizing and expounding itself 
in a way to put into new relations and give new 
significance to the whole category of words which 
describe its offices and possibilities. The phenom- 
ena of life become more real and the history which 
life is making becomes larger and more cosmic with 
each new turn in the tide of human affairs. Serv- 
ice, which describes the truest and most profitable 
employment of life, is thus naturally put in the way 
of a constant augmentation of demand and oppor- 
tunity. 

It is to expound these noteworthy accidents and 
conditions of life and to challenge to a diligent and 
truth-dedicating service that our author has put 
together the various essays and discourses con- 
tained in this volume. The viewpoint is that of the 
busy pastor and the sympathetic observer of current 

<») 



12 Life and Service. 

life movements. The discussions here presented, 
taken as a whole, will impress the reader as a med- 
ley of ideas suggested by several of the major topics 
of present-day discussion. This aspect of his work 
is admitted by the author himself in his Foreword, 
but the work is none the worse for this fact ; indeed, 
it gains in a quality of readiness and directness 
from the offhand and occasional method of treat- 
ment. There is a unity of purpose and discussion 
suggested by the title and realized in the ordering 
of the matter of the author's thought. We opine 
that exception will be taken to some of the views 
put forth, especially in the chapters which advert 
to scientific and technical matters; but the frank, 
practical, and manifestly sincere motive of the 
discussion must be admitted, and these are argu- 
ments without which even logic often loses its 
force. A book is the author's best, given in per- 
manent form to his generation and left to that gen- 
eration to pass upon and, if it sees fit, to pass on to 
a future time. The fact will not be missed by the 
reader of this book that the author feels himself to 
be offering to his contemporaries the best results of 
his own dealing with certain vital questions that 
affect the life and service of the everyday man and 
Christian. If the message be read and accepted in 



Introduction. 13 

this light, the author, by every token of his own 
challenge, will cheerfully abide the verdict which 
shall be passed upon it. The new war-born age is 
to present its own peculiar difficulties, its contradic- 
tions, its problems. Not a few of these problems 
and attendant difficulties will be such as pass over 
from the age lying just behind us. Evolution, crit- 
icism, social relationships, and questions of religion 
are continuous in the thought of the world. They 
change only in their aspects, not in their fundamen- 
tals. A new way of approach to them may be 
found, but when the student has come upon them he 
will find their facts to be of the flavor and sub- 
stance of the oldest things. Our author has put 
some emphasis upon this feature of the general 
problem. He has also shown, in his efforts to solve 
the problem, what every man must do whose real 
purpose in life is ministry and service. We com- 
mend our brother and his book to the thoughtful 
reader and student. H. M. Du Bose. 

Nashville, Tenn., April 29, 1918. 



CHAPTER I. 
Things True and False in Evolution. 

The word "evolution" means the act or process 
of unfolding, or the growth or development of a 
plan or of life from a thought or a germ. We 
may, therefore, with propriety speak of the evolu- 
tion of history or of the development of a dramatic 
plot. We might also speak of the evolution of a 
bird from an egg, a plant from a seed, a blossom 
from a bud, fruit from a flower, a butterfly from a 
caterpillar, and a moth from a cocoon. The word 
has a large range of legitimate uses and applications, 
for there is undoubtedly a sphere within which 
evolution does operate. But the word has got itself 
into bad company and has fallen into disrepute. 
Confusion has come of the meaning put into the 
word by Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley, Spencer, Haeck- 
el, and their followers, who claimed for the thing 
which it represents a power that does not belong 
to it. 

If I were going to write a comprehensive treatise 
on evolution, I should divide it into suborganic, 
organic, and superorganic, and explain that subor- 
ganic evolution refers to the development of matter 

(15) 



1 6 Life and Service. 

without life and applies to the formation of the 
solar system from some cruder conditions of mat- 
ter. Organic evolution would describe the process 
by which vegetable and animal life has been de- 
veloped. Superorganic evolution would refer to 
the principle operative in metaphysical and non- 
material spheres. These are the ordinary divisions 
in the treatment of the subject. I am not going to 
attempt anything like an exhaustive statement of 
any one of these, but shall make some observations 
upon deductions drawn from the theory of organic 
evolution. The rise and spread of the doctrine of 
evolution as the cause of life is one of the most 
startling intellectual phenomena of the past hundred 
years. 

The Doctrine Stated. 

In brief, the theory of evolution is that every- 
thing, animate and inanimate, in the visible universe, 
including man in his tripartite nature, with all his 
bodily, mental, and spiritual faculties and func- 
tions, came to be what it is through a process of 
"spontaneous generation, fortuitous development, 
and natural selection." Fifty years ago this doc- 
trine was almost universally accepted by the wise 
and learned. But the day of universal acceptance 
was short, for the simple reason that proof was 



Things True and False in Evolution. 17 

lacking, and the cumulating evidence has been 011 
the other side. 

While there is raised a chorus of authoritative 
voices in the realm of science in protest against the 
sweeping generalizations of evolution, still the as- 
sumptions are insistent ; and our schoolbooks, mag- 
azines, Sunday school literature, and even the pul- 
pits of our evangelical Churches betray a disturbing 
ignorance in our educators, editors, and preachers 
concerning the real status of the theory of evolu- 
tion. 

Some Typical Cases. 

Some time ago a young minister said to me that 
he could think of creation only in terms of evolu- 
tion. I was not surprised at his confession. His 
mind had probably never dwelt much upon the sub- 
ject of creation; and although he held three degrees 
from a certain institution, it was apparent that he 
knew nothing about evolution as a science. But the 
holding of one or more degrees from a university 
is no evidence that one knows everything or even 
anything properly. I knew the atmosphere of that 
institution and how popular evolution was in all its 
schools. In that university a sentiment obtains that 
to deny monistic evolution is to proclaim one's self 
a "mossback," a "fossil," a "back number," "behind 
3 



1 8 Life and Serine e. 

the times," and "unscientific" ; and it is always much 
easier to join the chorus of the wise and learned and 
cry, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians," than to 
stand against this thing and find out the truth 
through personal investigation. 

Another minister in one of the most prominent 
pulpits of New York City a short time ago made 
the assertion very emphatically that "Evolution is 
the hope of mankind," which was a very strange 
announcement coming from a minister of the gos- 
pel, and it must have been startling to his congre- 
gation — that is, if there were any Christians present 
who had learned from a better authority that the 
gospel of God is the only hope of mankind. But that 
prominent New York preacher is eloquent and has 
the reputation of being a learned man ; and men who 
have the reputation for scholarship and profound 
learning wield a commanding influence, and many 
follow them blindly. 

Still another clergyman in the East is reported 
to have said recently: "There is no escape for intel- 
ligent people to-day from the acceptance of the law 
of evolution. This law may be stated briefly to be 
that life on this planet, including man, has devel- 
oped from the lower to the higher types. Thus a 
man has gradually developed from some lower form 



Things True and False in Evolution. 19 

of animal life. And man in his highest estate has 
through infinite years developed from man in his 
savage state." There you have it from a man pro- 
fessing to be called of God to preach the gospel. 
He is more emphatic and dogmatic than Darwin 
ever was, for there was always an element of doubt 
in Darwin's mind, and the most he could say was: 
"It may be reasonably supposed." But this minis- 
ter of religion makes an excursus into the region of 
scientific speculation and imagination and dogma- 
tizes on evolution, and the trouble is that many 
people believe what he says because he is a preacher 
and a teacher. 

In his manual of "The Religion of Humanity" 
Dr. Broada says: "Socialism is the evolution of the 
human race from cannibalism and savagery to fra- 
ternalism and philanthropy, from the infamy of 
the swine to the splendor of God." And then he 
proceeds to define: "Not all the theories of mod- 
ern science are of equal significance from the 
point of view of religious development; indeed, 
there is preeminently only one concept which could 
arouse the necessary enthusiasm and devotion and 
give a basis upon which to construct a new moral 
ideal, the theory of evolution. This fundamental 
doctrine, which entails the belief that progress is 



20 Life and Service. 

the law of being of all that is in nature, including 
man himself, must be the new inspiration." Here 
is something truly wonderful. It affords a "basis 
for a new moral ideal," a "fundamental doctrine," 
and "furnishes the new inspiration." 

But Dr. Broada goes farther and says: "More 
than this, evolution is demonstrating the unity of 
nature, also proves the brotherhood of the world, 
the solidarity of creation, and so gives us the foun- 
dation for a new moral idea and lifts us out of the 
utilitarianism which would make it appear that our 
best endeavors are only of benefit to what is sec- 
tional and transitory." 

If this be true, then certainly evolution is a great 
thing, and its blessings are inestimable. And Dr. 
Broada goes on to say: "And so evolution gives us 
a new conception of the universe, a new conception 
of the aim of life, and provides a new theory of 
ethics, and is thus eminently fitted for becoming 
the basis for a new manifestation of the religious 
spirit." 

How all these advantages and benefits are to be 
discovered and applied, the writer does not say. 
But it was said at the beginning of this chapter that 
there is a range for the legitimate uses and appli- 



Things True and False in Evolution, 21 

cation of the word "evolution." This we are con- 
cerned to show. 

Some Things Tenable. 

"First the blade, then the ear, after that the full 
corn in the ear." 

So far as human life and observation go, the 
modal of development is from the smaller to the 
larger. 

"Great oaks from little acorns grow; 
Large streams from little fountains flow." 

The study of almost any race of people will il- 
lustrate the law of development. 

The English nation was born at the battle of 
Hastings in A.D. 1066, and since that date the 
English-speaking people have become the dominant 
race in the world. Along with their growth the 
English people have developed a unique and re- 
markable language ; a magnificent literature ; a sys- 
tem of education inculcating high ideals of morality, 
religion, and liberty; a democracy, or a government 
of the people, for the people, and by the people. In 
other words, we have a form of civilization which 
challenges the respect and admiration of the world. 

And what is meant by civilization? It means the 
concurrent development of science, politics, and re- 
ligion. Our civilization is an illustration of evolu- 



22 Life and Service. 

tion in its growth, and hence the word is legitimate- 
ly used in describing it. There are many other 
illustrations, of this law at work in the history of 
mankind. Man has discovered, invented, and ap- 
plied many forces that make for the development of 
industry, commerce, the arts, the trades, warfare, 
transportation, science and philosophy, communica- 
tion of intelligence, medicine, dentistry, surgery, 
government, and else. He has also brought his 
genius to bear upon the vegetable and animal king- 
doms and has wrought wonders in the development 
of varieties of plants and animals, securing these de- 
velopments through domestication and cultivation. 

But all this is very different from beginning with 
one order, class, genera, or species, and developing 
it into something else. That is the untenable thing 
in evolution. It is still the unproved hypothesis. 
It was to bridge this chasm that Mr. Darwin started 
out in his great work on "The Origin of Species by 
Natural Selection/' If he could have established 
one case of a given variety of either plant or animal 
becoming a distinct species, his hypothesis would 
have stood ; but he could not find the bridge. The 
best he or any other evolutionist has ever been able 
to do is to guess at the bridge. When it comes to the 
question of causal evolution or evolution in trans- 



Things True and False in Evolution, 23 

it from one class, family, or species to another, it 
is all speculation and imagination ; for there is not 
a single case in which it can be shown that such a 
thing has ever taken place. 

Reverting to the development of a social organ- 
ism, such as a state, Herbert Spencer says in his 
"First Principles/' "In the social organism integra- 
tive changes are clearly and abundantly exempli- 
fied," to which we all agree ; and he points out the 
three kinds of changes which proceed with practical 
regularity and continuity in the development of 
human society and which will apply to the English 
or any other people: "First a change from a less 
coherent to a more coherent state ; a change from a 
more homogeneous to a less homogeneous state; 
and a change from a less definite to a more definite 
state." But Mr. Spencer argues from the evolution 
of human society that the same law is also at work 
among the animals and that it produces changes in 
the same way as those which result in the develop- 
ments that are taking place in the social organisms 
of men. But there is no evidence to that effect. 
There is no social evolution in the affairs of other 
living creatures than men. In contrast with the 
evolution of human society, take such animals as 
herd together — horses, cattle, sheep, and deer. 



24 Life and Service, 

They have never exhibited any change. They herd 
together just as they have done from the beginning. 
Birds build their nests, ants live in colonies, bees 
hive, and beavers build their dams just as they have 
done from the beginning. There has been no change 
in their social organism or methods of work. 

Charles Darwin. 

Mr. Darwin is regarded as the discoverer of the 
principle of natural selection, or, as Herbert Spencer 
would put it, "the law of the survival of the fittest" ; 
and of the numerous books published by him, his 
"The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Se- 
lection" is by far his greatest work. It created a 
profound impression when first published. It had 
more to do with promoting and making popular 
the technical doctrine of evolution than any book 
ever written. However, he was not cocksure, but 
concluded by observing that species "may reasona- 
bly be supposed to be nothing more than enlarged, 
accentuated varieties which descended from a com- 
mon ancestry." He says: "I cannot doubt that the 
theory of descent, with modification, embraces all 
the members of the same great class or kingdom. I 
believe that animals are descended from, at most, 
only four or five progenitors, and plants from an 



Things True and False in Evolution. 25 

equal or lesser number." And then, conjecturing 
from analogy, he went a little farther and said: 
"Analogy would lead me one step farther — namely, 
to the belief that all animals and plants are descend- 
ed from some one prototype." One other observa- 
tion should be made, and that is, Mr. Darwin was 
not a materialist. He never sympathized with 
Herder and Haeckel in their theory of the sponta- 
neous generation of life; but he believed that God 
at the beginning breathed upon matter, or, to quote 
him more correctly, "the laws of life were impressed 
upon matter by the Creator." 

In these brief quotations is the essence of what 
Mr. Darwin taught and the foundation of his theory 
of evolution. He was. not dogmatic, and he was 
never certain; but he sets forth this theory tenta- 
tively and as a matter of conjecture. 

As already implied, Mr. Darwin was a theistic 
evolutionist, and the proof is at hand that he was 
also a Christian. The truth is, he lived to regret 
many of the opinions he expressed and deplored the 
use made of words he spoke and the conjectures he 
indulged in connection with his studies in natural 
history. 

Zion's Herald some time ago published a story of 
the great scientist related by Lady Hope which 



26 Life and Service. 

throws much light on his reverent attitude to the 
Bible and his personal faith in Christ, and also re- 
cords his genuine regret for the mischief that had 
resulted from his speculations in science in the ear- 
lier part of his life. 

Lady Hope, an Englishwoman and a consecrated 
Christian worker, some time ago told a Northfield 
audience the remarkable story of Darwin's religious 
life as it came under her personal observation. In 
one of the morning prayer meeting talks at North- 
field she said: 

It was one of those glorious autumn afternoons that we 
sometimes enjoy in England when I was asked to go and sit 
with the well-known Prof. Charles Darwin. He was almost 
bedridden for some months before he died. I used to feel 
when I saw him that his fine presence would make a grand 
picture for our Royal Academy, but never did I think so more 
strongly than on this particular occasion. He was sitting up 
in bed, wearing a soft embroidered dressing gown of rather 
a rich purple shade. Propped up by pillows, he was gazing 
out on a far-stretching scene of woods and cornfields which 
glowed in the light of one of those marvelous sunsets which 
are the beauty of Kent and Surrey. His noble forehead and 
fine features seemed to be lit up with pleasure as I entered 
the room. He waved his hand toward the windows as he 
pointed out the scene beyond, while in the other hand he held 
an open Bible, which he was always studying. 

"What are you reading now?" I asked as I seated myself 
by his bedside. 



Things True and False in Evolution, 27 

"Hebrews," he answered. "Still Hebrews, the royal book, 
I call it. Isn't it grand ?" 

Then, placing his finger on certain passages, he commented 
on them. I made some allusion to the strong opinions ex- 
pressed by many persons on the history of creation, its gran- 
deur, and then their treatment of the earlier chapters of the 
book of Genesis. He seemed greatly distressed, his fingers 
twitched nervously, and a look of agony came over his face 
as he said : "I was a young man with unformed ideas. I 
threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over 
everything, and, to my astonishment, the ideas took like wild- 
fire. People made a religion of them." Then he paused, and, 
after a few more sentences on the holiness of God and the 
grandeur of this book, looking at the Bible, which he was 
tenderly holding all the time, he suddenly said: "I have a 
summer house in the garden which will hold about thirty 
people. It is over there [pointing through the window]. I 
want you very much to speak there. I know you read the 
Bible in the villages. To-morrow afternoon I should like the 
servants on the place, some tenants, and a few of the neigh- 
bors to gather there. Will you speak to them?" 

"What shall I speak about?" I asked. 

"Christ Jesus," he replied in a clear, emphatic voice, adding 
in a lower tone, "and his salvation. Is not that the best 
theme? And then I want you," he said, "to sing some hymns 
with them. You lead on j^our small instrument, do you not?" 
The wonderful look of brightness and animation on his face 
as he said this I shall never forget, for he added: "If you 
take the meeting at three o'clock, this window will be open, 
and you will know that I am joining in the singing." 

How I wish that I could have made a picture of that fine 
old man and his beautiful surroundings on that memorable 
day! 



28 Life and Service. 

Spontaneous Generation. 
So far as I know, the doctrine of the spontaneous 
generation of life originated in Germany, as did 
much of our materialism and infidelity. Herder, a 
German philosopher of the eighteenth century, ad- 
vocated the doctrine of a continuous development 
in the unity of nature from inorganic to organic, 
from the stone to the plant, from the plant to> the 
animal, and from the animal to man; and he con- 
tended that the entire universe, including the bodies 
and souls of men, is the product of evolution. 
During the past two hundred years there were many 
advocates of this theory of life and the universe, 
but it was about fifty years ago that a number of 
distinguished scientists lined up with enthusiasm on 
the side of spontaneous generation. At that time 
Professor Tyndall emphatically announced that 
there was in dead matter "the promise and potency 
of life,'* but later he took this back. About the 
same time Dr. H. C. Bastian wrote in his book, 
"Beginnings of Life": "Both observation and expe- 
riment unmistakably testify to the fact that living 
matter is constantly being formed de novo in obedi- 
ence to the same laws and tendencies which deter- 
mine all the more simple chemical combinations, 
which is another way of saying that life is sponta- 



Things True and False in Evolution 29 

neously generated, or that organic life comes from 
inorganic matter." This theory became popular, 
and for a while spontaneous generation was trium- 
phant. Great scientists like Haeckel, Bastian, Tyn- 
dall, Huxley, and Herbert Spencer consented to it, 
and they with one consent began to advocate Herd- 
er's theory of life, and insisted that all life has come 
from inorganic matter. But it may be said of 
scientists, as of other people, that "all of them may 
be fooled sometime, but all of them cannot be 
fooled all the time." 

There was a school of scientists that opposed 
spontaneous generation all the time and held to> the 
theory that all life must come from life; and if life 
appeared after matter had been sterilized, there was 
some defect in the experiment. Many experiments 
were made. With some of these gentlemen the 
result was always the same, and each experiment 
resulted in a stronger confirmation of the theory. 
Dr. Bastian, however, discovered that it was not 
only necessary to sterilize the infusion that is ex- 
perimented with, but also that the water and the air 
in the vessel must also be sterilized. After taking 
these precautions no life appeared. 

Mr. Dallinger detected another fact that Dr. Bas- 
tian and others had overlooked in their experiments 



30 Life and Service, 

— namely, that among" the lower forms of life there 
is a most surprising vitality. He found that many 
germs could survive a temperature of three hundred 
degrees Fahrenheit, and some seemed to> be almost 
fireproof. 

All the great scientists, including Professor Tyn- 
dall and Mr. Huxley, took the most painstaking 
care in making experiments ; and they also took care 
to sterilize their hay infusion, the vessels., the water, 
the atmosphere, and as a result the matter experi- 
mented with yielded no life. After repeated exper- 
iments without the appearance of life, no less per- 
sons than Professor Tyndall and Mr. Huxley re- 
pudiated the doctrine of the spontaneous generation 
of life, and they proclaimed to the world that not a 
shred of trustworthy testimony obtained in support 
of the doctrine of spontaneous generation. And so 
for fifty years the doctrine of "life comes from 
life" has been victorious all along the line, and 
to-day no reputable scientist will speak in terms of 
spontaneous generation. It is an exploded theory 
and a collapsed doctrine. 

Continuous Progress. 

The contention of evolutionists is that everything 
in the history of nature, inlcuding man, goes for- 



Things True and False in Evolution. 31 

ward by development and that the power that makes 
for the growth of the plant, the animal, and man is 
resident within. But as a matter of experiment and 
observation, those forces that contribute most to 
development are the agencies without. 

Take any of the species of plant or flower you 
please, and you will find that their finest develop- 
ment has come of domestication and cultivation. 
Those beautiful varieties of roses, the Marechal 
Niel, the Woodland Margaret, the La France, and 
the American Beauty, owe their beauty and fra- 
grance to cultivation or agencies that have been 
brought to bear upon them from without. We are 
assured that they were very common blossoms un- 
til the horticulturist took them in hand. The same 
is true of all plants and flowers. The same law of 
development obtains in the cultivation of all fruits, 
fowls, and animals. It is outside interference and 
agencies that contribute most to their development ; 
and just as soon as outside attention and cultivation 
are withdrawn, deterioration begins. Domestica- 
tion and cultivation have wrought wonders both in 
the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and always de- 
terioration is just as marked when cultivation is 
neglected or withdrawn. 

And what is true of plants and animals is equally 



32 Life and Service. 

true of man. Man declines physically, intellectual- 
ly, and morally by neglect. The progress of man 
upward is, to say the least of it, negligible apart 
from civilization ; and civilization is the concurrent 
development of science, politics, and religion. In 
pagan and unevangelized lands the peoples are de- 
graded, ignorant, superstitious, and bestial, and evo- 
lution finds no encouragement in all these sterile 
places and habitations of cruelty. 

Mr. Darwin found the inhabitants of the island 
of Terra del Fuego in the most degraded condition 
of any people whom he met on his first trip around 
the world in the interest of geology and natural his- 
tory. The natives were wild savages and cannibals 
and bore little or no resemblance to civilized man. 
But twenty years later he visited that island again, 
and a complete change had taken place. In making 
inquiry he found that a missionary had been labor- 
ing among them for a number of years, and the life 
and labors of that missionary had wrought the 
marvelous changes. He was converted to the cause 
of foreign missions and for the balance of his life 
supported the cause of missions with an annual con- 
tribution. 

The law of retrogression is more marked in man 
than the law of development. The downward pull 



Things True and False in Evolution. 33 

is stronger than the upward. Throughout the entire 
history of man there has had to be supernatural 
interventions to keep him going. Look at the great 
crises in his history and see how God has interrupt- 
ed this downward journey and picked him up and 
started him anew on his way. 

Man started at his best in Adam. He was the 
crown of God's creation and was given dominion 
over all the rest. But evolutionists contradict this 
account of man's origin; and hence we find the 
schoolbooks, Sunday school literature, the most 
attractive magazines of the day, and the recent 
theological literature contradicting God's account of 
man's creation and history. The primitive man of 
the schoolbooks is a very different creature from 
the primitive man of the Bible, from whom your 
"primitive man," "cave dwellers," and "tree men" 
have descended by the law of deterioration. The 
issue is on between the Bible and evolution ; between 
God's authoritative account of the beginning of 
things and evolution's system of guessing, specula- 
tion, and imagination. 

The same Book that tells us of the origin of man 

also tells us of the fall of man and the redemption 

of man. But evolution knows nothing about man's 

fall, nor does it concern itself about his redemption. 

3 



34 Life and Service. 

The fall and redemption of man are not on its pro- 
gram. It calls attention to man's achievements and 
to the wonders of our civilization as evidence of 
man's marvelous progress, etc. But civilization, 
with all that it means, is a product of the gospel, and 
there is no real progress of the race apart from the 
gospel. So I repeat that man's real progress and 
development come of forces introduced into his life 
from without; and man no more goes forward by 
development through the forces that are within 
than do the plants and animals, for with each the 
pull is downward, and the result is deterioration 
rather than development. 

Transmutation of Species. 

According to Huxley, life originated in a low 
form of matter called protoplasm, which passed 
into higher forms by a constant succession of trans- 
mutation of species until at length mankind was 
reached. On this hypothesis it would not be im- 
proper to raise the question whether all life sprang 
from one cell or two, one for plants and one for 
animals. And if there were two, may there not 
have been many? 

The earliest vegetable form known is that of the 
algse, or seaweed. The theory is that all vegetable 



Things True and False in Evolution. 35 

and animal life came from that seaweed, and that 
teaching includes man in his body, soul, and spirit. 
It is also admitted that all through the ages the spe- 
cies of algae has been preserved and has remained 
essentially the same and unchanged and that it 
abounds to-day in the same form, and yet in its 
functioning it does not produce plants and animals 
now. Prof. Albert L. Gridley, in his book, "Gene- 
sis the Foundation for Science and Religion," asks: 
"If some algae parents begat algae offspring, so to 
speak, and have continued to do so throughout the 
ages, is it probable that other algae parents begat 
offspring of some other species still, and so the 
thousands of species of fossil and living plants have 
been produced ?" 

The thing that perplexed Mr. Darwin more than 
anything else was his inability to prove the trans- 
mutation of species. He observed many interesting 
things in the operation of the law of natural selec- 
tion, and he found some striking analogies and 
many varieties of species ; but he never could prove 
the theory that a variety ever became a species or 
that a species crossed over into something else. Dr. 
Etheridge, Superintendent of the Department of 
Natural History in the British Museum, has de- 
clared: "In all this great museum there is not a 



36 Life and Service. 

particle of evidence of transmutation of species. 
Nine-tenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer 
nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly 
unsupported by fact. They adopt a theory and then 
strain their facts to support it." 

De Cyon, the Russian scientist, says: "Evolution 
is pure assumption." Professor Tyndall said: 
"There ought to be a clear distinction made between 
science in the state of Irypothesis and science in the 
state of fact. And inasmuch as it is still in its 
hypothetical stage, the ban of exclusion ought to 
fall upon the theory of evolution. I agree with 
Virchow that the proofs of it are still wanting, that 
the failures have been lamentable, that the doctrine 
is utterly discredited." 

# It will be seen from these quotations from emi- 
nent scientists that they are not agreed about the 
thing they were trying to establish as a science. 
Champions of evolution have not a very exalted 
opinion of one another, as is evident from Darwin's 
letter to Sir Joseph Hooker in 1866, referring to 
Herbert Spencer: "I feel rather mean when I read 
him. I could bear and rather enjoy feeling that he 
was twice as ingenious and clever as myself; but 
when I feel that he is about a dozen times my su- 
perior even in the master art of wriggling, I am 



Things True and False in Evolution. 37 

aggrieved. If he had trained himself to observe 
more, even at the expense, by a law of balance- 
ment, of some loss of thinking power, he would 
have been a wonderful man." 

The Missing Link. 

There are a number of bridgeless chasms that 
evolutionists have been unable to cross and which 
have given the real scientist real concern and in- 
duced him to reject the theory of evolution. 

The fact is, there is a gulf between the plant and 
the animal, between species of plants and also spe- 
cies of the animal, and between the animal and man. 
The widest gulf yawns between man and the animal 
kingdom, and evolutionists have sought in vain for 
the missing link between man and the ape. 

The theory is that in the far distant past both 
man and the monkey had a common ancestor. Much 
has been made of the anthropoid ape, but it is re- 
markable that the anthropoid ape in the course of 
time has not reproduced another man or another 
species of man. But no; nature finished her work 
in the genus when man was evolved from that cer- 
tain kind of ape! 

Scientists recognize the gulf between man and all 
the members of the subordinate tribes of creation. 



38 Life and Service. 

Mr. Huxley frankly admits: "A great gulf inter- 
venes between the lowest man and the highest ape 
in intellectual powers. There is an immeasurable 
and practically infinite divergence of the human 
from the Simian stirps. There is an enormous 
gulf between them. No one is more strongly con- 
vinced than I am of the vastness of the gulf between 
civilized man and the brutes, or is more certain that, 
whether from them or not, he is assuredly not of 
them. He alone possesses the marvelous endow- 
ment of intelligible and rational speech whereby in 
the secular period of his existence he has slowly 
accumulated and organized the experiences which 
are almost wholly lost with the cessation of every in- 
dividual life in other animals., so that now he stands 
raised upon it as on a mountain top far above the 
level of his humble fellows and transfigured from 
his grosser nature by reflecting here and there a ray 
from the infinite source of truth." And Mr. Hux- 
ley was never able to supply the link between man 
and the brute. 

Years ago in his imagination Haeckel supplied 
the missing link between man and the ape, calling 
the thing "pithecanthropus," but he did not locate 
it nor tell the world where to find it. But that dis- 
tinguished honor came to Professor Dubois a few 



Things True and False in Evolution. 39 

years later while he was on the island of Java. In 
some volcanic deposits he found a small incomplete 
skull and near by a diseased thigh bone and not far 
away two molar teeth, and when he made a report 
of his find these were hailed as remains of the miss- 
ing link, and it was forthwith dubbed Pithecanthro- 
pus Erectus. But Prof. E. D. Cope, another evolu- 
tionist and a very competent anatomist, declares 
that the femur is that of a man. The erect form 
of this find carries with it all the physiological and 
anatomical characteristics of a perfect man, accord- 
ing to Professor Cope; and so the missing link so 
long talked about has never been found, and pres- 
ent-day evolutionists have really quit looking for it. 
They are all agreed that a great gulf intervenes be- 
tween matter and nothing, life and nonlife, man and 
brute ; and, as we have observed and implied, science 
is unable to bridge any part of this gulf. 

In New York City in December, 19 16, the Amer- 
ican Association for the Advancement of Science 
met, and the question of man's relationship to the 
ape was considered with special reference to the 
missing link. From the reports of that Association 
meeting it is clear that a notable change of view 
was expressed, and the question was raised whether 
the ape was related to- man by ascent or descent! 



4-0 Life and Service. 

One of the most recently authoritative publications 
by a well-known German anthropologist urges that 
"apes are to be regarded as degenerate branches of 
the prehuman stock." This is interpreted to mean 
that man is not descended from the ape, but the ape 
from the man ! 

Evolution Not a Science. 

Professor Cope says: "As a view of nature from 
an especial standpoint, evolution takes its place as 
a distinct science." But this is not true according 
to the well-established and universally accepted defi- 
nition of science. The Century Dictionary defines 
"science" to be "Knowledge gained by systematic 
observation, experiment, and reasoning; knowledge 
coordinated, arranged, and systematized; also the 
prosecution of truth as thus known in the abstract 
and as a historical development." This comprehen- 
sive definition will cover properly all the well-known 
and universally accepted sciences — mathematics, 
astronomy, biology, botany, chemistry, geology, 
natural philosophy, physiology, anatomy, psychol- 
ogy, etc. — but you cannot comprehend evolution 
under this definition. The history, data, and con- 
clusions of evolution do not warrant the recognition 
of it as a science. At the very most it is only a the- 



Things True and False in Evolution. 41 

ory; and colleges and universities should certainly 
teach our sons and daughters the difference between 
things scientific and things hypothetical, speculative, 
and imaginative. Evolution, therefore, is not a 
science, but only a hypothesis. And men of learn- 
ing, and especially ministers of the gospel, should 
keep this fact clearly in mind; and if so, they would 
not so often stultify themselves and appear so shock- 
ingly absurd to intelligent people by courting favor 
with evolutionists. 

It would also be a great relief if the teachers of 
the public schools over the country would take time 
to acquaint themselves with the real status and facts 
concerning this fad. As a result their teaching 
would be more authoritative and acceptable, for 
then our children would not gain the false impres- 
sion that there is a deadly conflict on between the 
Word of God and science. There is absolutely no 
conflict between the Bible and those things which 
are entitled to be called sciences. If our writers of 
books, editors of papers, teachers, and ministers of 
the gospel would only study this matter to a finish 
— and to do so would not require a very comprehen- 
sive course of reading — they would soon prefer to 
be described as "unscientific," "fossils," "behind the 
times," "not up-to-date," rather than to follow the 



42 Life and Service. 

lead of a horde of would-be scientists and, together 
with them, fall down and worship this modern god. 

The Bible Not in Danger. 

Some one has truly said that the writer of Gene- 
sis did not record the account of creation in scien- 
tific language, yet it is still true that he did not 
record anything inconsistent with the findings of 
science. The truth is, Genesis anticipated some of 
the latest discoveries of science and the record of 
events; for Genesis gives the order of animal life 
as fish, reptiles, birds, mammals, and man, 
and this is the order according to science. Also 
both Genesis and science are agreed that animal life 
was preceded by vegetable life. It can also be 
stated that no scientific error has ever been found 
in Genesis, and its language is sufficiently flexible 
to allow agreement with modern discoveries and 
with the tenable deductions of geology. 

Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace maintains that there 
must have been three interpositions of a divine and 
supernatural power to account for things as they 
are, creation of matter, creation of animals, and 
creation of man; and these distinct interventions 
are specifically recorded in Genesis i. i, 21, 27 in the 
use of the Hebrew word bar a (to create), and other 



Things True and False in Evolution. 43 

words are used in the story of preparing the earth 
and our solar system for the entrance of man or for 
the rehabilitation of our world for our race. 

The old Book is in no danger. It has fought to 
a finish all the battles of the centuries, and we may 
rest assured that it will come out all right in its 
present conflict with evolution and every other phase 
of German kidtiir. 

The pick and the shovel have helped the old Book 
and within the last sixty years have uncovered 
buried civilizations with the records written in their 
clay cylinders of the very events recounted in the 
Bible. In this way Sir William Rawlinson in 1854 
confirmed the record in Daniel concerning the char- 
acter and reign of King Belshazzar, whose identity 
was disputed, and consequently the authenticity and 
genuineness of the book of Daniel were called into 
question by the higher critics. But as some one has 
said: "The work of archaeology is God's handwrit- 
ing upon the wall of the banquet hall of evolution's 
sacrilegious carnival." By archaeology has the evi- 
dence been confirmed which gives to the book of 
Daniel a secure place in the sacred canon. 

Can an Evolutionist Be a Christian? 
As a matter of fact, evolutionists are divided into 
at least two schools, theistic and materialistic, and 



44 Life and Service. 

perhaps the majority of them are professedly the- 
istic and agree with Darwin that the Creator at the 
beginning breathed upon the matter or impressed 
the laws of life upon it from the beginning. Some 
eminent scientists, sympathetic with the theory of 
evolution, are not only theists, but Christians, and 
believe that holding to the hypothesis of evolution 
is not incompatible with the Christian faith. Mc- 
Cosh and Drummond were of this belief. And so 
there are many professed evolutionists to-day who 
claim to be Christians, just as there are many higher 
critics who would resent it as an insult if their 
Christian faith were called into question. But if a 
real intelligent evolutionist has faith, it must be an 
attenuated type of faith. His ethical life may be 
exceptionally attractive; but we have raised the 
question as to his relations to Christ — that is, saving 
faith in Christ, the Christ of the Bible. It is a dif- 
ferent proposition from an assent to the life and 
character and teachings of the historic Christ and 
admiration for the unique unselfishness and beauti- 
ful consistency of the Man of Galilee. We may 
accord to Christ the chief place among all the sages 
and teachers of history and admire him and his 
teachings, and in a sense follow him, without being 



Things True and False in Evolution. 45 

a Christian; for how can we really believe in Christ 
and be followers of him without believing his 
word? 

Evolution is naturalism and includes all things, 
Not one single thing connected with life and man, 
including Christ, escapes its claims, not one thing. 
Evolution, then, does not and cannot admit of in- 
spiration, miracles, and the supernatural. Evolu- 
tion is materialism. Whatever may be the claims 
of its devotees, it is materialism pure and simple; 
and it cannot in the nature of things assimilate to 
Christianity, nor can an evolutionist, from this 
viewpoint, be consistently a Christian. 

Evolution ignores the Word of God, takes no 
cognizance of the fall of man, knows nothing of the 
redemption that is in Jesus, and finds no need nor 
place for the Holy Spirit. How, then, can an evo- 
lutionist be a Christian ? 

Professor Harnack. 

Professor Harnack, the German oracle and head 
of the Theological Department in the Berlin Uni- 
versity, is a consistent evolutionist, and he faithfully 
represents evolution in one of his lectures. He says : 
"I owe it to you and the subject itself to state to you 
briefly and with precision the attitude which histor- 



4-6 Life and Service. 

ical science occupies to-day to these accounts of 
miracles in the evangelists. We entertain the stead- 
fast conviction that what happens in time and space 
is subject to the general laws of motion; that, there- 
fore, in this sense — that is, the breaking through the 
natural relation of things — no miracle can take 
place. The natural connection of things cannot be 
broken. There occur no miracles." There you 
have it, good and straight from Professor Von Har- 
nack, of Germany, the leading philosopher and scien- 
tific theologian of the world and the most scientific 
evolutionist of this generation. He is the model 
scholar, scientist, philosopher, and theologian not 
only for Germany, but was for a long time the 
most frequently quoted author in America. I have 
heard at least one Methodist preacher within the 
last ten years quote Harnack more frequently and 
with more relish, seemingly,, than any other writer ; 
for if he could clinch an argument, either in a 
speech or in a sermon, with a quotation from Har- 
nack, he seemed to be satisfied that his case was 
perfectly safe; and I have thought he quoted Har- 
nack with greater reverence than he did either 
Christ or Paul. Of course this same Professor 
Harnack denies the resurrection of Jesus, but says 
that Jesus forced his way through death and that 



Things True and False in Evolution. 47 

God has awakened him and exalted him to life and 
glory ! Grandiloquent sounds ! 

Harnack denies that any witnesses ever saw 
Christ after his resurrection; denies that his body 
was raised. He repudiates the argument of the 
apostle in 1 Corinthians xv., based on the fact that 
Christ "appeared to Cephas ; then to the twelve ; then 
he appeared to above five hundred brethren at once ; 
. . . then he appeared to James; then to all the 
apostles; and last of all, as unto one born out of due 
time." Of course he could not admit such evidence 
without being inconsistent with evolution, for evolu- 
tion cannot accept the supernatural ! 

Dr. Lyman Abbott. 

Dr. Abbott is both inconsistent with evolution 
and Christianity. He is astride the fence, or is on 
both sides of the question. It would not be so bad 
if "the old man eloquent" acted out his inconsist- 
encies alone ; but no man on the platform or on the 
tripod during the past generation has spoken to a 
larger class of intelligent and cultured people, and 
it is putting it mildly to say that he has impaired 
the faith of many and overthrown the faith of not 
a few. He has many followers, in the pulpit and 
out of it, who get their sermons from The Outlook 



48 Life and Service. 

instead of from God's Word and who, like the edi- 
tor of that bright and ably edited periodical, are 
consistent neither with the teachings of evolution 
nor the doctrines of Christ, although they profess 
both. In his book, "Evolution of Christianity,'" 
Dr. Abbott says: 

The new theology . . . has no difficulty in believing that 
the control of the physical is by the spiritual and the universe 
by its God and is sometimes manifested by unexpected or 
unusual acts of power and wisdom for spiritual ends. That 
these are miracles, whether any particular event reported as 
such a witness of divine power actually took place, is purely 
and simply a question of evidence. The new theology has no 
hesitation, therefore, in accepting some miracles and rejecting 
others — in accepting, for example, the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ as a fact sufficiently authenticated. 

The doctrine of evolution does not allow Dr. 
Abbott that freedom, nor does Bible Christianity 
warrant him in taking the liberty he claims in ac- 
cepting some of the miracles of the Bible and re- 
jecting others. But he claims this right in the name 
of the "new theology," by which I presume he 
means that progressive type that denies the inspira- 
tion of the Holy Scriptures, the virgin birth of Je- 
sus, his real Deity, his vicarious atonement, his lit- 
eral resurrection, and his coming again to judge the 
zvorld. 



Things True and False in Evolution. 49 

But if Dr. Abbott means what he says and admits 
the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ from the 
dead, then he has broken with both evolution and 
also with his new theology and has returned to "the 
faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. ,, 
For he says: "The new theology is not the doctrine 
that men need no forgiveness and no God to forgive 
them." But I should like to know how the theory 
of evolution shows that man is a sinner and that he 
needs forgiveness and that there is a Saviour for 
sinners and a God waiting to be gracious. 

Again Dr. Abbott says: "The Christian evolu- 
tionist does not believe that Jesus Christ is the 
product of evolution." But how can evolution ac- 
count for the appearance of Christ on the planet in 
harmony with its theory if he is not the product of 
this wonderful thing we are studying? The great 
claim of evolution is that it accounts for the origin 
of every living thing that appears on the earth by 
purely natural processes and that these cannot in- 
clude miracles. 

He then goes on to say that he proposes to dis- 
cuss "the Christian life in the terms of an evolu- 
tionary philosophy"; and he does discuss it in the 
words, but not in the principles, of the doctrine of 
evolution. The impression he makes by all these 
4 



50 Life and Service. 

rash and high-sounding statements is that he is pid- 
dling with both evolution and Christianity. He is 
not faithful to either, and he is unfair to both. 
How can you fit the Christian religion into the sys- 
tem of cosmic evolution as taught by Herder, 
Haeckel, Bastian, and Herbert Spencer? You just 
cannot do it ; and if Dr. Abbott cannot see the con- 
tradictions and absurdities involved in his efforts to 
reconcile evolution with Christianity by the process 
of rejections and acceptances, all unwarranted by 
both, then his followers should do some thinking 
for themselves. 

The Effect on Our American Faith. 

The effect on our faith is not far to find. The 
acceptance of this unproved hypothesis has well- 
nigh destroyed our American colleges and universi- 
ties for good. They are no longer an asset for the 
moral uplift of our nation. In fact, they have be- 
come a peril to our sons and daughters seeking 
higher education. The majority of them suffer in 
the loss of faith and Christian experience while at- 
tending the great universities of the country partic- 
ularly. Many lose out entirely and return home 
religious bankrupts — the Bible gone, Christ gone, 
faith gone — and all that remains is evolution ! 

Our colleges and universities used to be religious, 



Things True and False in Evolution. 51 

saturated through and through with the gospel of 
the grace of God and permeated with a spirit and 
atmosphere of prayer. In those days the presidents, 
professors, chancellors, and teachers, while strong 
in learning, were also men and women of solid 
piety; and young men and women could find sym- 
pathy and help from those teachers in solving the 
great questions of personal godliness. But it is not 
so any longer. Sixty per cent of the teachers in 
these great universities do* not bother themselves 
with so insignificant a matter as religion ! The pro- 
fessors have given it up. The pupil soon finds out 
the attitude of the teacher toward religion, and the 
bright teacher too often decides the faith and future 
of the pupil so far as religion is concerned. There 
is going on a good work in colleges and universities 
of the country among the young men and young 
women in the interest of their moral and religious 
life; but that work is directed by young people 
themselves through the Young Men's Christian As- 
sociation and the Young Women's Christian Asso- 
ciation, and as a rule the faculties take little or no 
interest in these religious matters. 

In this present gigantic world struggle the United 
States and her allies are going to throttle Germany. 
Sooner or later that struggle will end with victory 



52 Life and Service. 

on the side of democracy over autocracy. It cannot 
be otherwise, for Germany is sure to> reap what she 
has sown. But the influence of Germany will be felt 
in this country long after our flags have been un- 
furled in Potsdam. Germany has sown a big crop 
of secularism in our schools in this country, and it 
will take a long time to weed it out. But with the 
effects of German kultur, evolution, higher criti- 
cism, a materialistic philosophy, all of the same 
cloth, on Germany itself, we should take warning; 
for if we allow that brood a free hand and do' as 
Germany has done, encourage and foster those hurt- 
ful things, we cannot escape the consequences, for 
it is true of a nation, as well as of an individual, 
that "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
reap." 



CHAPTER II. 
The Origin of Man. 

"God created man in his own image." 

The two eyes of history are geography and 
chronology, but in the vast fields of creation our 
knowledge is so< limited that neither eye enables us 
to see very far. The authentic history of all the 
ancient nations is brief and unsatisfactory at best. 

Beyond the period of Jj6 B.C. the history of the 
Greeks merges into mythology or into those legend- 
ary stories where truth and fable mingle in confu- 
sion. 

It is claimed that Hindu history goes back to 
2000 B.C. and that of China to 2600 B.C. 

From inscriptions on their monuments, the anti- 
quarian makes the reigns of certain Egyptian kings 
to have been about 5,000 B.C., but this is uncertain. 

Alfred Russell Wallace thinks that man has in- 
habited this planet for ten thousand centuries! 
Prof. John Fiske fixes the period of human exist- 
ence at two hundred and forty thousand years. 
Prof. Joseph Le Conte, formerly of the University 
of California, supposes man to have been on the 
earth for a period of one hundred thousand years. 

(53) ' 



54 Life and Service, 

Baron Brunsen, a distinguished German scholar and 
theologian, maintained in his work on Egypt that, 
upon evidence outside of geology, the human race 
had its beginning twenty thousand years B.C. 

So it will be seen that in the history of man's 
creation chronology does not help us much, and we 
are more than convinced that the conclusions of our 
scientists are mere guesswork. 

Man was the crowning work of creation. The 
earth had been previously prepared for him, for the 
"earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof; the 
world, and they that dwell therein. " 

There are computed to be one hundred and ninety- 
seven million square miles on the surface of this 
planet, and there are two hundred and sixty billion 
cubic miles in its contents. God created it as a part 
of his vast domain. 

Light travels at a velocity of one hundred and 
eighty-seven thousand miles per second. Sir John 
Herschel calculated that if a single bean were 
dropped every mile between the earth and a voyage 
to the nearest fixed star, it would require a fleet of 
ten thousand ships, each drawing six hundred tons 
weight, three and one-half years, traveling with the 
speed of light to reach that star, and at the end of 
the voyage every ship would be empty of beans. 



The Origin of Man. 55 

And from that star to one on the outermost border 
of creation it would require an almost infinite fleet ; 
and after a voyage of one hundred million years, 
traveling at the velocity of light, the voyage would 
be scarcely commenced. 

But in the universe there are things infinitely 
small as well as infinitely large. Modern physiology 
informs us that the lifeblood coursing through our 
veins consists of distinct organisms so tiny that one 
hundred and twenty billion of them can be packed 
into a single cubic inch, and this is but typical of 
the rest of the body. A single cubic inch of the liver 
of animals contains one hundred and fifty-six bil- 
lion cells, while each cell includes sixty-four billion 
living units; but the ultimate atoms would be three 
hundred trillion. The whole liver contains ninety 
cubic inches, and so we should have in a single liver 
one hundred and fifty-six billion multiplied by 
ninety, and that result multiplied by sixty-four 
billions, and that result multiplied by three hun- 
dred-trillion. And yet, according to modern sci- 
ence, the atom is no longer ultimate; for while 
the atomic theory of the universe, so long re- 
ceived as a working hypothesis, has given way to 
the electronic theory, the electron is now ultimate. 
If you would reduce the atom to electrons, you 



56 Life and Service, 

would have to magnify an atom to the size of 
the town hall and an electron to the size of a pin 
point in order to get relations and proportions. And 
every electron, as well as every sun and system in 
the unfathomable universe, is the result of God's 
handiwork. But creation has never been surveyed, 
and so geography has thrown little light on the 
history of creation. 

But our theme is not with creation in general, but 
with man in particular. Alexander Pope said: "The 
proper study for mankind is man." And Sir Wil- 
liam Hamilton has said : "On earth there is nothing 
great but man, and in man there is nothing great 
but mind." The origin of man has engaged the 
attention of sages and philosophers from a remote 
antiquity, and from before the dawn of authentic 
history have come legendary accounts of man's ori- 
gin. It is true that these stories are myths, but they 
are instructive, nevertheless. A myth is to the most 
uncivilized man what a hypothesis is to the man of 
science, and both are explanations of natural phe- 
nomena. Prof. John Fiske asserts that "A thing is 
said to be explained when it is classified with other 
things with which we are already acquainted. That 
is the only kind of explanation of which the highest 
science is capable." 



The Origin of Man. 57 

The Greek Myth. 

According to the Greeks, a race of giants called 
Titans first inhabited the earth. Prometheus., one 
of these giants, is said to have made the first man 
by taking some clay and kneading it in water. 

The Ancient Persians. 

The Persians taught that there existed a Supreme 
Being who created two other beings, Ormuzd and 
Ahriman, to whom he imparted much of his own 
nature. Ormuzd remained faithful to his Creator, 
and he was considered the source of all good to the 
world. He created man and furnished him with 
the materials for his comfort and happiness. Ah- 
riman, on the other hand, revolted and became the 
father of evil. According to this ancient philoso- 
phy, the conflict between light and darkness com- 
menced with the creation of Ormuzd and Ahriman. 

The Hindus. 

Many of the Hindus believe in Brahma as the 
great creator of the universe and that men are the 
descendants from the sons of Brahma who were 
heads of their respective castes. These sons were 
born of Brahma in the following peculiar manner: 
The son who became the ancestor of the priestly 



58 Life and Service. 

caste issued from Brahma's mouth. The father of 
warriors came from his right arm. The sire of the 
farmers and traders came from Brahma's thighs. 
The father of the mechanics and laborers was born 
of his feet. 

Another Hindu myth has it that Brahma made a 
man and a woman and placed them upon the Island 
of Ceylon and commanded them to remain upon 
this island. But the man, who was called Adami, 
saw a beautiful land at a distance across the waters. 
He told this to the woman and desired her to go 
with him to the new country. The woman advised 
him to let well enough alone and that they stay 
where they were. But the man insisted and finally 
carried her over on his back, finding a very narrow 
isthmus connecting the new land with the island. 
But the moment they reached the new country the 
isthmus sank behind them, and they were thus cut 
off from their home. And what was their disap- 
pointment when they found the country to be only 
barren rocks and sand! Brahma cursed them for 
their disobedience; but Adami said: "It was my 
fault. Curse me and not her." But Brahma said: 
"I will save her, but not you." Then the woman 
replied: "I love him. I cannot live without him. 
If you will not spare him, do not spare me." But 



The Origin of Man. 59 

Brahma replied: "I will spare you both and watch 
over you." 

The Northmen. 

According to the ancient inhabitants of Germany, 
Sweden, and Denmark, in the beginning there was a 
great empty space on the north upon which lay a 
region of mist, ice, and snow, and on the south a 
region of sunlight and warmth. The breath of the 
South swept across to the ice and snow, causing it 
to melt and fall into the empty space between. Out 
of this empty space sprang a giant who fed on the 
milk of a cow. The cow lived by licking the ice. 
Finally she licked until there appeared three beings 
who killed the giant; and out of his flesh they made 
the earth, and out of his bones they built up the 
mountains, and out of his blood they formed the 
seas, and from his hair they made the trees, and 
from his teeth they made the rocks and crags, and 
from his skull they made the heaven, and from his 
brains they formed the clouds. Then they created 
man out of an ash tree and woman out of an alder, 
and from this pair has come the human family. 

The Chinese. 

The Chinese have a myth that in the beginning 
all was darkness and confusion, but out of a vast 



60 Life and Service, 

egg came a being called Poon-Koo-Wong. The 
lower half of the shell of the tgg became the earth 
and the upper half the heaven. With his right hand 
Poon-Koo-Wong created the sun and with his left 
hand the moon and the stars. Then he created the 
five elements — earth, water, fire, metal, and wood. 
Afterwards he caused a cloud of vapor to rise from 
a piece of gold and a similar cloud from a piece of 
wood. He breathed on each cloud; and the one 
from the gold became a male principle, and the one 
from the wood became a female principle. The 
result of the union of the two clouds was a son and 
a daughter, and these two beings were the parents 
of the human race. 

The Indians. 

Almost every Indian tribe of the Western Conti- 
nent has its own peculiar myth concerning the origin 
of man. Many of the South American Indians and 
most of the Western tribes represent their ancestors 
as having come from caves, lakes, or springs ; hence 
they have a peculiar veneration for these places. 
The nations of the neighborhood of Lake Titicaca 
claim to have descended from ancestors who came 
from this lake. 

The Warras, a tribe of Guiana, say that their 



The Origin of Man, 61 

ancestors originally lived in a country above the 
sky and that one day a young hunter in searching 
for his arrow found a hole which led down to the 
world below. Prompted by curiosity, he made a 
ladder of rattan and descended to our earth. Here 
he found many strange animals whose flesh he rel- 
ished very much. After a time he thought he would 
like to return to the sky and tell his people of his 
discovery. With great difficulty he succeeded in 
climbing back. His friends were anxious to visit 
the new country and began to descend through the 
aperture. They all got down safely except the last 
man, who, being very fat, stuck fast in the hole 
and remained there, shutting off all communication 
thereafter between the two worlds. 

The Kumis, a tribe of Asia, believed that a cer- 
tain god, after having made the world, set to work 
to make one man and one woman of clay; but as 
he worked only in the daytime, a great snake came 
at night while he slept and devoured the two beings. 
Finally he created a dog, which drove the snake off, 
and the creation of man was completed. 

The negroes of Guinea believe that a man was 
created by a huge black spider. The Kaffirs believe 
that everything made itself and that the trees and 
all the herbage grew by their own will. The Peru- 



62 Life and Service. 

vians have a tradition that after the flood six people 
came out of a cave and repeopled the desolate earth. 
Certain native tribes of Texas claim to have orig- 
inally come from Hot Springs, Ark. The Appa- 
lachian tribes say they originally came from an arti- 
ficial mound on the Big Black River. 

The Damara tribe of Western Africa believe they 
had their origin, along with the animals, in a certain 
tree that grows in their country. They say that 
when they came from the tree all was dark; and a 
man lighted a fire, which scared away most of the 
animals, and those that ran away became the wild 
animals. The few that remained became the tame, 
or domestic, animals. 

The Blackfeet Indians say that there were two 
lakes — the lake of the men and the lake of the 
women — and that the men came from the one and 
the women from the other. On first meeting the 
men struck up a bargain with the women, in which 
the latter were outwitted and reduced to a state of 
perpetual drudgery. The bargain was that the men 
agreed to be protectors of the women if they would 
do all the household work. 

The Ute Indians believe that the earth was at 
first covered with mist which the Great Spirit scat- 
tered with his bow and arrow. Finding the earth 



The Origin of Man. 63 

uninhabited, he made a man out of clay and set him 
to bake. It was his first attempt; and the fire not 
being hot enough, the man came out white. Then 
he tried the second time; and he got the fire too 
hot, and the man came out black. The next time 
he succeeded in getting the fire properly tempered, 
and the man came out red, the most perfect type of 
humanity ! 

The Tonka ways of Texas trace their origin to a 
mole; the Delawares claim to have descended from 
a snake ; the Choctaws came from a crawfish. 

The Abipones of South America believe they de- 
scended from the Pleiades, or Seven Stars, which 
they call the Great Father. This constellation dis- 
appears from the sky in South America during a 
part of the year, and then these people think their 
Great Father is sick and fear he is going to die. 
When the constellation reappears, they celebrate his 
recovery with festivities and music and dancing. 

The Calumecks believe that the first inhabitants of 
the earth were divine and lived eighty thousand 
years and that they had wings and luminous faces 
and could live without food. But there was a fruit 
called shime, which was sweet and tempting, and 
men began to taste it ; but, alas ! it deprived them of 
all their perfections. Their wings fell off, and the 



64 Life and Service. 

brilliancy of their faces disappeared. They felt the 
need of food, and their lives extended only to ten 
thousand years. 

The Seminole Indians believe that when the 
Supreme Being made the earth he made three men 
who were of a fair complexion. He led them to a 
small lake and ordered them to jump in and wash 
themselves. One sprang in immediately and came 
out whiter than ever. This was the white man. 
The second hesitated; and in the meantime the wa- 
ter became somewhat turbid from the agitation of 
the first, and when he came out of his bath he was 
copper-colored. This was the Indian. The third 
staying out of the water too long, it was very dark 
with mud, and he came out black. This was the 
negro. The Supreme Being now placed before 
them three boxes; and because the black man had 
been unfortunate he gave him the first choice, and 
he chose the heaviest box. The Indian chose the 
next heaviest, and the white man was obliged to 
take the lightest. When the boxes were opened, 
the first was found to contain hoes, axes, plows, and 
other implements of labor; the second contained 
bows and arrows and other hunting and fishing 
apparatus, etc. ; the third contained pens, ink, and 



The Origin of Man. 65 

paper — and thus were the several occupations of 
these races determined. 

The people of Madagascar have a tradition, or 
curious myth, to the effect that the first man was 
made of the dust of the ground and placed in a gar- 
den, where he was surrounded by luscious fruits 
and clear streams, but had no desire to eat or drink 
and was free from desire of any kind. The Creator 
had forbidden him to eat or drink. The great en- 
emy tempted him to eat the delicious fruits of the 
garden, but failed. Then the enemy changed him- 
self into another form and, pretending to be a mes- 
senger from the Creator, commanded him to eat and 
drink. The man obeyed the command; and very 
soon there appeared on his leg a pimple, which grad- 
ually enlarged until at the end of six months it 
burst, and a beautiful girl issued from the tumor. 
The man was very much surprised and was at a loss 
to know what to do ; but a messenger from heaven, 
appearing unto him, told him to let her remain in the 
garden until she was grown and then to take her for 
his wife, and this woman became the mother of all 
human beings. 

The Quiches, of Central America, say that there 
was a time when the earth did not exist, but only 
heaven, and below which all was empty space. A 
5 



66 Life and Service. 

vast expanse of water appeared, and the earth rose 
out of the water. Then the gods created animals; 
but were disappointed with them, because they could 
not tell their names nor worship the "heart of 
heaven. ,, Then it was resolved to create man, and 
four attempts were made before they were success- 
ful. First they made man out of clay; but he had 
no mind, and the water again dissolved him. Next 
they were made of wood and increased in numbers ; 
but they had no intellect and could not worship, and 
so they withered away. In the third effort man was 
made of a certain tree and woman of a pith of a 
reed. These could neither think, speak, nor wor- 
ship, and they were destroyed by a flood, except a 
few that escaped by climbing tall trees and exist 
to-day as monkeys. The fourth attempt was suc- 
cessful ; and four men were created who could think, 
reason, speak, and had powerful intellects. They 
worshiped the Creator; but the gods were fright- 
ened at their knowing so much, and they breathed 
clouds into their eyes, SO' that they would remain 
men and not become gods. Then while they slept 
the gods made them four wives, and from these 
came all the people of the earth. 

The Kickapoos (American Indians) say there 
was a time when there were no women, and the men 



The Origin of Man. 67 

were not like those of this present day, for they had 
long bushy tails of which they were very proud. 
They plaited their long silky hair and decorated 
them with beads and shells and ribbons. But they 
neglected the worship of the Creator, and he re- 
solved to punish them by depriving them of their 
favorite appendages. This deprivation caused such 
sorrow among them that the Creator as a compen- 
sation took the tails and converted them into women, 
upon whom the men now bestowed their admiration 
and decorated them as they had their tails. Wom- 
an, they say, still retains indications of her origin; 
for she is still beloved by men, is beautiful, has long, 
flowing hair, is lively and frisky, and ever follows 
after men, as did their tails of old; but instead of 
brushing off the worrying insects, as did the tails, 
she is provided with a sharp sting, which is called a 
tongue, to worry man. 

The Talmud says Adam was made of the dust 
of the earth collected from every part of the world ; 
and he was so tall that his head reached the heaven, 
while his face was brighter than the sun. He was 
feared by the angels and was worshiped by all the 
creatures of earth. The Lord, to display his power 
to the angels, caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam 
and then removed a portion of every member of 



68 Life and Service. 

his body, so that while he was reduced in size he 
retained his proportions. The portions removed 
were distributed to every part of the earth. Tilath, 
the mother of demons, was his first wife, but she 
flew away and left him. Then Eve was created 
from one of Adam's ribs, and she was brought to 
him in a beautiful dress and accompanied by a 
choir of angels playing on heavenly instruments. 
Delicious food was served on tables of precious 
stones for the wedding feast, and the sun, moon, 
and stars danced together at the wedding. The 
angels were jealous of Adam's glory, and one of 
them, Samel, succeeded in seducing him and caus- 
ing him to fall. 

The nations of Patagonia believe that men were 
created by certain gods who inhabit vast caverns 
under the earth and that these gods created the 
Indians under the earth in these caves and gave 
them bows and arrows and turned them out to shift 
for themselves as best they could. They believe 
that the Spaniards were created by other gods who 
gave them guns and swords. 

The Ainos are a tribe living in Japan, but distinct 
from the Japanese. They are noted for the abun- 
dance of hair on their bodies. The Japanese have 
a legend that in ancient times the mothers of this 



The Origin of Man. 69 

tribe suckled their young bears, which in time be- 
veloped into men, and these men still retain the 
quality of the bear on the hairy surface of their 
bodies. 

Pre- Adamites. 

The doctrine of other races of man besides Adam 
grew out of the statements in the book of Genesis 
concerning Cain's marriage, building a city, etc. 
It is argued that Cain must have married a woman 
of another race, for there were no daughters of 
Adam from whom to select a wife and no sons of 
Adam whom he could find to help him build a city. 
And so it has been argued that there must have been 
a pre-Adamite race, or people in the world before 
Adam or who lived contemporaneously with Adam 
and his posterity. 

Dr. Alexander Winchell believed this doctrine 
and wrote a very learned book on the theory entitled 
"Pre- Adamites." Without attempting an explana- 
tion of the question as to "where Cain got his wife" 
or where Cain found men to help him build a city, 
a general answer to Dr. Alexander Winchell's pre- 
Adamite hypothesis may be found in the following 
reflections: 

1. Man has ability to adapt himself to any part 
of the world and to all conditions of climate and has 



yo Life and Service. 

power to master his circumstances and live in any 
zone, which is proof of the unity of the human 
species. 

2. There is also evidence that the races once spoke 
the same language, for there has been found an 
identity of root words in use among the scattered 
nations of the earth, which argues unity of lan- 
guage. Max Miiller is authority for the claim that 
these root words indicate that the various languages 
were originally one. 

3. We have already observed by implication that 
there are traditions among all the nations of men 
and tribes of people of the creation of man, the 
Garden of Eden, man's temptation and fall, the 
division of time into weeks, and the destruction of 
man by a deluge. 

4. Then there is a community of customs, such as 
sacrifices to supernatural beings and the practice of 
circumcision, especially among the Egyptians, Ethi- 
opians, Phoenicians, certain tribes of Indians in 
South America, and the Hebrews. 

5. All men have the same number and kind of 
bodily organs. Man's natural position among all na- 
tions and tribes is an erect position. All the nerves, 
muscles, bones, veins, and arteries are the same 
among all men, regardless of race, color, complexion, 



The Origin of Man, Ji 

shade of hair, manner of life, degree of intelligence, 
character, or culture. 

6. The similarity of mental and moral faculties 
are marked. Intellect, sensibility, will, and con- 
science are common to all races, tribes, and families 
of men, though varying in degrees. 

7. All these things argue that all men are of the 
same species of being, and therefore all humanity 
constitutes one great brotherhood of man. 

In an old Volume containing sixty-six separate 
books, written by forty different authors within a 
period of about sixteen hundred years (and we are 
told they wrote as they were moved by the Holy 
Ghost), is furnished the only authentic account of 
man's origin: 

And God said, Let us make man in our own image, after 
our likeness : and let them have dominion over the fish of the 
sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over 
all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon 
the earth. 

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God 
created he him; male and female created he them. 

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruit- 
ful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and 
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of 
the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the 
earth. 

And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing 



72 Life and Service. 

seed, which is upon all the face of all the earth, and every 
tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed ; to you it 
shall be for meat. 

And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the 
air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein 
there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it 
was so. 

How beautiful this is in comparison with the tra- 
ditions, myths, and legendary stories of heathenism 
in accounting for the origin of man ! And yet in all 
the legends of the nations of antiquity, as well as in 
the traditions of heathen nations to-day, there are 
traces of the account that God gives in his Book, 
which proves that all of these tribes, peoples, and 
nations at one time possessed a knowledge of God: 

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not 
as God, neither were thankful ; but became vain in their 
imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 

And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an 
image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four- 
footed beasts, and creeping things. 

Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through 
the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies be- 
tween themselves: 

Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped 
and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed 
forever. Amen. 

This same Book also settles the question of the 



The Origin of Man. 73 

unity of the human species, for it also authoritative- 
ly declares: 

And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to 
dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the 
times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; 

That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel 
after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one 
of us : 

For in him we live, and move, and have our being. 

The origin of man as we find it recorded in this 
old Book, so simply and beautifully told, differs very 
materially too from the so-called scientific accounts 
which have been foisted and advocated by evolu- 
tionists for the past two hundred years and which 
we have discussed in another chapter. 

The ridiculous accounts of the origin of man 
given by pagan nations amuse us, and we do not 
take them seriously, but the account of evolutionists 
is more absurd and wicked. For the heathen seri- 
ously repeat the story that has come down to them 
from generation to generation, and they know no 
better ; but the evolutionist willfully turns away from 
the only satisfactory and authoritative account that 
is possible and insists that we receive his theory in 
the name of science. 

I beg to be excused, for I am unwilling to stultify 



74 Life and Service. 

my intelligence and insult the Creator and Redeemer 
of man by accepting an unproved hypothesis when 
in the old Book he has given the world I find that 
God the Lord has spoken authoritatively concerning 
the origin of man, and I am going to believe God 
rather than man. 



CHAPTER III. 

Mind Over Matter ; or, Suggestive 
Therapeutics. 

"As he thinketh in his heart, so is he." 
In the preparation of this chapter I wish to ac- 
knowledge my indebtedness to> Drs. Schofield, Pa- 
ryn, Dubois, Hudson, and Worcester, whose psy- 
chological studies I have read with interest, pleas- 
ure, and profit. I disclaim originality in the treat- 
ment of any principle of suggestive therapeutics, 
but merely submit a few reflections on the books I 
have read and the result of my studies in this fasci- 
nating field of psychological healing. 

A suggestion is an impression consciously or un- 
consciously received through any one of our five 
senses or by means of one mind acting upon an- 
other. Telepathy is now universally accepted by 
students of psychology as a science. The Bible evi- 
dently teaches the doctrine of mind acting upon 
mind and of spirit communing with spirit. 

Our education is the result of suggestion, and the 
effect of any suggestion is the result of the sugges- 
tion preceding it. There is a variety of words now 
in use descriptive of this power, which is recognized 

(75) 



76 Life and Service. 

by an increasing number of the medical fraternity as 
a mighty force in the promotion and conservation 
of health — mesmerism, hypnotism, magnetism, and 
somnambulism. This last word does not denote 
walking in sleep according to its literal meaning, but 
is used by the teachers of suggestive therapeutics to 
denote a high degree of suggestibility and is a symp- 
tom rather than a state or an act. 

Autosuggestion is a suggestion which arises en- 
tirely within one's own mind from some thought or 
from some bodily sensation, either real or imaginary. 
Voluntary autosuggestion is a suggestion with which 
one voluntarily tries to impress himself. Thera- 
peutic suggestion is a suggestion conveyed to a pa- 
tient through some one of the senses and so directs 
that it will assist in overcoming disease, real or 
imaginary. 

We are all receiving suggestions every moment 
of the hours not spent in sleep, and possibly also 
during sleep; and there are times, as we all know, 
when the suggestions received make a much deeper 
impression on our minds than at other times. The 
depth of the impression made by a given suggestion 
depends not only upon the nature of the suggestion 
and the manner in which it is given, but also upon 
the mental condition of the recipient at the time he 



Mind Over Matter. yy 

received the suggestion. The present knowledge of 
psychology enables the physician to intelligently 
prepare a patient's mind so that any suggestion 
given him will produce a decided effect. 

Suggestion has in all ages and in all lands, by 
one name or another, been used at some time or 
other in its exaggerated forms; and whenever or 
wherever this has happened wonderful and myste- 
rious phenomena have occurred, and in almost every 
instance the real force which has produced these 
phenomena has, through ignorance or perversity, 
been attributed to other agencies. It is only re- 
cent research in the realm of psychology that has 
given to us some of the laws of suggestion and has 
enabled us to account for these varied phenomena 
in the majority of instances. 

As there are no two of us exactly alike, either 
physically or in our mental constitution, so there are 
no two of us who have received exactly the same 
impression through our senses ; therefore no educa- 
tional experiences are identical. This being the 
case, it will be readily understood that a given sug- 
gestion will call up as many different associations 
of thought as there are different minds to receive 
it. The effect of a suggestion is dependent on and 
limited by the previous education of the recipient 



yS Life and Service. 

of that suggestion. To illustrate this fact, it has 
been suggested that you may ask half a dozen per- 
sons what sensation or thought the little word 
"love" suggests; and you will find, as a rule, al- 
most as many different experiences as there are 
minds to whom the word is spoken. In one it will 
stir up a feeling of joy; in another, a sensation of 
sadness; in another, an experience of mirthfulness ; 
and in yet another, perhaps no feeling at all, but 
start a chain of thought recalling a love story read 
or related by a friend or an acquaintance in the 
years gone by. And such is the case with almost 
any word that you may mention. In this way 
thousands of different experiences could be obtained 
from the associations around us by similar words. 

It is among people who are highly suggestible 
that you will find the record of so many marvelous 
cures and by all manner of treatment. Such people 
are susceptible to impressions, and they are liable to 
hysterical ailments, and frequently the diseases of 
which such people are relieved are imaginary; but 
whether physical or mental, the malady must be 
treated. The more suggestible people are, the more 
likely the complaints are to be, in part or altogether, 
imaginary, induced by autosuggestion. And when 
such is the case, the more likely they are to relapse 



Mind Over Matter. 79 

into their old condition or to become the victims of 
new and more aggravated diseases. 

Strictly speaking, there is a difference between 
an induced suggestion and an autosuggestion. An 
induced suggestion is an impression which arises 
entirely in one's own mind, while an autosuggestion 
arises from a bodily sensation or by recalling some 
incident or experience. 

Mesmer's doctrine of suggestion was that a fluid 
passed out of him into his patients and produced 
what was for many years called mesmerism; and 
it has been found from a thorough investigation 
that Dr. Mesmer's patients were a weak-minded, 
imaginative, and hysterical type of people. Braid 
took up Mesmer's work and became interested in 
mesmerism, but changed the name to hypnotism. 
He denied the doctrine of a fluid passing from the 
operator to the patient, but insisted on induced 
sleep. In more recent years wonderful things have 
been done and marvelous cures have been wrought 
through the power of hypnotism. But still more 
recently it has been demonstrated that hypnotic sub- 
jects are not asleep at all, but that they are brought 
under the power of suggestion and that thousands 
of cures have been effected through the mental proc- 
ess of suggestive therapeutics. 



80 Life and Service. 

The day of "good, strong medicine" seems to be 
waning, and the time is approaching when physi- 
cians will address themselves more and more to the 
study of the science of psychology and recognize 
the mind of man as the most potent factor in the 
healing of diseases. And the laity who have given 
this subject some thought are not a little surprised 
that the learned medical fraternity have so long neg- 
lected this inviting field and have permitted medical 
frauds, quacks, charlatans, and patent-medicine men 
to enter in and heal, obviously through the power 
of suggestion, patients by the thousands whom 
the scientific physician had given up as incurable, 
and it does not mend matters to say that they are 
not cured. They have been cured; and we of the 
laity come in contact with these patients both before 
and after these cures have been wrought, and they 
are witnesses, and so are we, that these people can 
truthfully say: "Whereas I was sick, now I am 
well." And we know, too, that these cures have 
been wrought through the power of suggestion, 
though in thousands of cases the patients do not 
know it, but attribute it to something else or to 
some one else. In many instances the healers them- 
selves do not know it, but in some they do; but it 
is not to their selfish advantage to let their patients 



Mind Over Matter. 81 

know. They want their poor victims to believe that 
they possess a mysterious power, or they may roll 
their eyes and look pious and hypocritically say it 
is Christian Science, or divine healing. 

Some of these arch frauds who have taken ad- 
vantage of this knowledge and power of mind in 
healing in these latter times are Schlatter, Schrader, 
Alexander Dowie, Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, and 
others, ad nauseum; but the greatest of them all is 
Mary Baker G. Eddy! These religious frauds and 
all of their class have worked their cures through 
the power of suggestion and claimed for it miracu- 
lous healing, and in the same way and by the same 
power of suggestion multitudes of people have been 
healed who have gone on pilgrimages to shrines and 
come in contact with sacred relics. 

Do not understand me to reject the Bible doctrine 
of healing by faith. During our Lord's earthly 
ministry he performed various and sundry miracles 
of healing and gave to the disciples power to heal 
diseases, and he also bestowed the gift of healing 
upon the apostolic Church, and he is the "same yes- 
terday, to-day, and forever." The gift of healing 
still belongs to the apostolic Church ; and when it is 
to his glory and our good, by a faith prepared and 



82 Life and Service. 

adequate, he will now, as in other days, not only 
forgive our iniquities, but heal our diseases. 

But we are discussing suggestive therapeutics, 
and there is a sane and scientific basis for this teach- 
ing. There is an increasing army of psychologists 
of the present day who hold to the theory of the 
dual mind ; that man possesses two* minds, a volun- 
tary and an involuntary, a conscious and a subcon- 
scious mind. In sleep we are controlled by the 
involuntary mind, conscious of its actions only 
through dreams. This involuntary mind controls 
every bodily function and is the seat of the affec- 
tions or the emotions and is the guardian of the 
memory. It is believed that our entire educational 
experience is stored up there, and it is amenable to 
control by the voluntary mind. To go a little far- 
ther into the philosophy of this question, it is said 
that every impression or suggestion that a man 
raises through his senses is stored up in the minute 
cells of the brain. These cells are all in relation 
with one another, so that each impression is asso- 
ciated with those that have preceded it through the 
same avenue of sense. These brain cells are nour- 
ished by the blood or are active according to the 
amount of blood supplied to them. In a healthy 
man these impressions remain inactive till some 



Mind Over Matter. 83 

suggestion arouses them into activity by the asso- 
ciation which it calls up. The more he dwells on 
an impression, the more active the brain cells in- 
volved become and the greater the amount of blood 
supplied to them, owing to a law of nature which 
demands that where there is an increased activity 
in the body there shall be increased circulation. 
The more any group of cells is kept active, the more 
likely are the impressions stored up in these cells to 
be in our conscious mind. 

These cells may be aroused to activity in at least 
three ways> — namely: (1) By an impression from 
without; (2) by the voluntary or involuntary 
thought of the individual himself; (3) by an abnor- 
mal congestion of the brain or after the adminis- 
tration of certain drugs. It is the continual stimu- 
lation of one group of cells which produces habits 
of thought, and this accounts for the peculiarity of 
monomaniacs. Many of these cells are motor ones 
which, when aroused, send out impulses to the 
various muscles and organs of the body. Some- 
times the impulses are feeble, owing to the circula- 
tion in the brain ; and sometimes they are incorrect, 
owing to imperfect education or to the physical 
condition, which for a time has interfered with the 
transmission of the normal impulses. The motor 



84 Life and Service. 

cells may remain dormant for a long time if a func- 
tion, for mechanical reasons or through ignorance 
of hygiene, has been allowed to lie idle and artificial 
means have been employed to take its place. 

We have an illustration of these suggestions 
and observations in that very common complaint, 
which is almost universal in our day, known as 
constipation. We find also illustrations of the same 
thing in those common experiences when some mu- 
sical air or poetical stanza or verse will run through 
the head for days or until something else displaces 
it or the mind becomes absorbed by other things. 
Then these cells get a chance to> rest. But one can 
get rid of a musical air or a stanza by humming a 
different air or by repeating a different stanza or 
verse. And so in like manner one can get rid of 
undesirable lines of thought by concentrating atten- 
tion and repeating lines or sentences of a different 
and more healthful line of thought. 

Going back to the cell proposition on the princi- 
ples laid down above, we have the explanation of 
that rare person in some communities known as the 
genius. He has certain intellectual faculties devel- 
oped in a phenomenal degree, and as a rule he is 
unable to converse upon subjects which are not in 
his special line. He appears to have no idea outside 



Mind Over Matter. 85 

his particular line of work and, indeed, seems in- 
capable of interesting himself in anything else. The 
reason for this is that only certain groups of brain 
cells are ever thoroughly stimulated. Nothing in- 
terests him unless it affects these groups; and his 
mind being continually on his hobby, these cells are 
kept active at the expense of other portions of the 
brain which in time, from disease, may refuse to 
respond to the ordinary stimuli. A genius is said 
to be removed but one step from an idiot, and the 
explanation just given will in a large measure ac- 
count for it. (I beg the pardon of the genius who 
may chance to read this chapter.) 

It is impossible to blot anything out of a man's 
mind; but if it contains undesirable thoughts, we 
can overcome their effects by placing new thoughts 
there. The new thoughts will replace the old ones, 
provided the suggestions are repeated over and over 
again. It is a well-known observation that patients 
have been rendered worse by those in the sick room 
wearing a long face and by having all of the bad 
symptoms rehearsed in their hearing. Many chil- 
dren have been made stupid by being constantly told 
that they were stupid and had no sense and could 
never learn. Many a boy has been made incorrigi- 
ble by being constantly scolded and being repeatedly 



86 . Life and Service. 

told that he was mean and bad and that he was 
hopelessly lost. 

The story is told of Dr. Adam Clarke, the great 
scholar and theologian and universally recognized 
as the father of modern commentators, that when 
a small boy he was very dull, and the principal of 
the school he attended in London called him his 
dunce. On one occasion a kindly gentleman inter- 
ested in children and the cause of education visited 
the school and was shown through it. The bright 
children were put on exhibition, and then the atten- 
tion of the visitor was called to Adam Clarke, stand- 
ing in the schoolroom with a dunce cap on his head. 
The principal said to the visitor: "And this is our 
dunce. " The visitor walked up to* Adam and laid 
his hand upon his head and said : "Never mind, my 
boy. You are not a dunce, but a promising lad. 
You have the making of a man in you, and you will 
yet come out all right." It is said that Dr. Clarke 
dated the beginning of his illustrious career as a 
scholar from that incident and often declared that 
the touch of the visitor's hand and his encouraging 
words made a new boy of him and that the incident 
made him a scholar. 

Of course to obtain the best results from thera- 
peutic suggestion, either in teaching or applying it, 



Mind Over Matter. 87 

a thorough knowledge of psychology, anatomy, phys- 
iology, chemistry, pathology, and diagnosis is de- 
sirable. But the most meager knowledge of these 
things will be of incalculable advantage to any one 
who will utilize the power of suggestion in healing 
his own disease and conserving the health of his 
body. This doctrine teaches that the force that 
heals a man is largely within himself and, when 
understood, may be controlled by himself. Just as 
the activity of the propelling force within a man 
who walks a mile is stimulated or depressed by the 
nature of his thoughts, so also will suggestion, when 
properly directed, arouse the healing force within 
many, and on the nature of the suggestions given 
will depend the extent to which it is aroused. 

Physiology and psychology should have a prom- 
inent and commanding place in our school curricula ; 
and if our education included a thorough knowledge 
of these sciences, there would be no demand or ex- 
cuse for such absurdities as Christian Science, quack 
doctors, and charlatans in general. In the judgment 
of these writers on suggestion, medicine will never 
become an exact science until medical psychology 
becomes a prerequisite to the practice of medicine. 

Dr. Parvn, President of the Chicago School of 



88 Life and Service* 

Psychology, submits the following conclusions, 
which are worth thinking about : 

i. The vital force which heals the patient is within the 
patient himself. 

2. The vital force is generated within the patient himself 
by the digestion and assimilation of food. 

3. The amount of vital force generated depends upon the 
quantity and quality of food introduced into the stomach. 

4. Anything that will interfere with the necessary supply 
of properly selected food or the digestion or assimilation of 
food after it has been received by the stomach will interfere 
with the generation of vital healing power. 

5. The digestion may be retarded or completely stopped by 
certain mental states. 

6. The food supply should be regulated by a correct knowl- 
edge of the requirements of the body. 

7. Knowledge is stored up in the mind, and the mind is 
influenced entirely by suggestion. 

8. The creation, expenditure, and control of vital healing 
forces are directly or indirectly dependent upon suggestion. 

9. If any one would intelligently direct this healing force, 
he must have a thorough knowledge of the effects of sugges- 
tion. 

10. The physician must understand the simple means for 
ascertaining the individuality and suggestibility of his patient, 
so that he may determine in advance the mental and physical 
effect any given suggestion is likely to produce. 

The contention of this chapter is that our physi- 
cians should give more attention to psychic influ- 
ence and use more intelligently the power of sug- 



Mind Over Matter. 89 

gestion as a healing force. If they would use sug- 
gestive therapeutics as a healing power, they could 
soon put out of business the quacks, charlatans, and 
the Christian Scientists as healers of diseases. By 
so doing they would not only increase their efficiency 
as the healers of diseases, but also help the ministry 
and the Church in conserving the faith of the people 
and thereby remove a great reproach from the med- 
ical fraternity and the Church of God. 

Of course it must be kept in mind that suggestion 
alone is not sufficient to heal all disorders and dis- 
eases. Tuberculosis, cancer, appendicitis, and de- 
caying teeth cannot be relieved by suggestion; but 
the contention is that the power of suggestion 
should be put under contribution by the physician 
in treating all kinds of ailments. The materia med- 
ica has its place and uses, and there are times when 
"good strong medicine is necessary," but there are 
times and cases when it is not necessary. Nor is 
there ever a time or case when suggestion is out of 
place. 

Some strange things, though not inexplicable, 
have taken place under the power of suggestion. 
Dr. Paul Dubois, of the University of Berne, tells 
of a patient being healed ; and the physician, in or- 
der to test his suggestibility, took hold of his arm 



90 Life and Service. 

and said to him: "Since when has your arm been 
paralyzed?'' The patient declared there was noth- 
ing the matter with his arm; and the Professor, 
turning to his class, said: "Gentlemen, here is a 
man with the strange disease of psychic paralysis of 
the arm and did not know it." And then, raising 
the man's arm, he let it go, and it fell like a club to 
his side ; and he was unable to raise it until the op- 
posite suggestion was made and his mind relieved, 
and the arm was no longer paralyzed. The same 
author tells of a man who dislocated his leg, and 
his own brother witnessed the replacement, which 
was done with a jerk and a snap. This brother at 
the time felt great pain and was crippled for a year 
on account of it. 

The probability is that the phenomena of trances, 
shaking, jumping, running, and all those peculiar 
manifestations attendant upon those great revivals 
in this country beginning a hundred years ago can 
be accounted for and explained upon the principle 
of suggestion — not the revivals, but the peculiar 
manifestations of the power attendant upon the 
revivals. 

In the Middle Ages it was seen that nearly all the 
women of a town fell into hysterical cries and uni- 
versally gave themselves up to a foolish dance. This 



Mind Over Matter. 91 

also may be explained upon the principle of sugges- 
tion. Even in our day we understand that hysteria 
under the power of a kind of a dance of St. Guy 
invades boarding schools for little girls, The same 
thing has been seen at Basel and at Baden within 
the past few years, and these cases may be the re- 
sult of suggestion. In the settlement of Kehrsatz 
thirty young girls were taken with pains in their 
joints and convulsive movements of the arms and 
legs, and it became necessary to isolate them in or- 
der to stop the epidemic of nervousness. And the 
great probability is that this too* finds its explana- 
tion in suggestion. 

What is it that causes people to shed tears at the 
theater when they know that what passes before 
their eyes is fictitious and imaginary and that there 
is no reason for pitying the hen> or weeping over 
the faithfulness of the heroine? What makes our 
voices tremble, our throats grow husky, and our 
eyes dim with tears when we read an affecting page 
or book, when we know it is a work of pure imagi- 
nation? Some invalids cannot stand the odor of 
certain kinds of flowers ; and ladies have been known 
to faint upon entering the parlor where such flowers 
were on a table, not knowing that they were artifi- 
cial. 



92 Life and Service. 

A young army Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion secretary at one of the cantonments in the 
South tells me that he has seen large numbers of 
young men in the camps lined up with bared backs 
for vaccination, and before the officer-physician got 
to them many of them in the line would fall over in 
a faint. Now, what causes that sudden illness and 
faint? Why, suggestion, and nothing but sugges- 
tion. 

Suicide, deliberate murder, burglary, robbery, and 
incendiarism are the results of suggestion. 

Suggestive therapeutics appeals to me and is, I 
believe, founded upon common-sense principles. 
There is nothing mysterious or uncanny about it. 
There is nothing about it that cannot be satisfac- 
torily explained. On the other hand, it explains 
many things. It insists on certain things, such as 
pure air, deep breathing, plenty of pure water (and 
if you cannot get it pure, take plenty of it into your 
system anyhow, hot or cold), also a sufficient 
amount of nutritious food, and, by all means, it 
insists on maintaining a hopeful mental attitude 
and persistently desiring the condition of health you 
are working and aiming for, and hope for it and 
believe for it and keep cheerful. 

If we live up to the suggestion of regular habits, 



Mind Over Matter. 93 

good digestion, thorough assimilation, and perfect 
elimination, health will be our reward without tak- 
ing very much "good strong medicine, ,, for such is 
the teaching of suggestive therapeutics. And the 
matter of health has much to do with life and serv- 
ice, for no man can be his best and do his best with- 
out health of body and of mind. 



CHAPTER IV. 
The Law of Service. 

"Serving the Lord." 

The Meaning of Life. 
It is important that we take a right view of life. 
It is necessary in order to invest wisely and reap 
profitably, for "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall 
he also reap." We must have some adequate con- 
ception of life's meaning, what we are living for, to 
avoid hopeless failure and loss in the final outcome. 
The ancient philosophers spent much time and en- 
ergy in discussing the summum bomim, and their 
speculations and disputations were often to little or 
no profit. We should take time to think about life 
and what to do with it, for there is nothing that 
could be of more importance. If our presence on 
this planet is not an accident, if the mystery of life 
is not altogether unfathomable, we should address 
ourselves to the business of finding out why we are 
here and what we ought to do with the thing we call 
life. Those who have taken time to ponder soberly 
the mystery of life have found it to be a serious 
business. If, as we are assured, life is a trust com- 
(94) 



The Law of Service. 95 

mitted to us, we should so prize it and invest it that 
we may be found faithful when the curtain drops 
on the drama. 

The One Source of Light. 

Solomon said: "Of making many books there is 
no end ; and much study is a weariness of the flesh." 
But there is one Book that tells whence we came 
and whither we are going and what this present life 
means. If we discard this Book, we shall fail to 
reach an estimate of the significance of life and 
vainly toil at its solution. If this Book furnishes 
the key, and we are wise in using it, we may explore 
many kingdoms and the glory of them and find 
wherewith to illustrate the meaning of life. 

The Law of Christian Service. 
(Matt. xx. 26-28.) 
According to Christ's teaching and ministry, he 
only can be great who has a great plan and purpose 
for his life. The doctrine of life inculcated by 
Jesus is briefly set forth in the Shorter Catechism, 
which declares that "the chief end of man is to glo- 
rify God and to enjoy him forever/ ' This means 
to do the will of God, which will of God is the 
highest good for each and all. This Jesus illustrat- 
ed when he said: "I come to do thy will, O God." 



g6 Life and Service. 

The divine will is revealed to us in the book of 
nature and in the book of revelation. The demands 
of nature expressed in the laws of moderation, sleep, 
regularity, cleanliness, etc., are God's will for our 
bodies. The demands of righteousness expressed 
in testimonies, laws, precepts, statutes, command- 
ments, and promises are God's will concerning our 
moral and spiritual natures. 

The personality and saviorhood of Jesus Christ 
is the central fact in the Bible and the most impor- 
tant truth in the universe. He said: "This is life 
eternal, that they might know thee the only true 
God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." And 
again he said: "I am come that they might have life, 
and that they might have it more abundantly." 

The soul that obtains this life may also know the 
will of God in everyday matters — concerning busi- 
ness, how to spend money, whether to> go on a cer- 
tain journey, embark in a certain business, invest in 
a certain scheme, marry a certain person, or follow 
a certain vocation. By consulting our best judg- 
ment, the providence of God, the Word of God, and 
the Holy Spirit, we need not long remain in igno- 
rance concerning any given circumstance or any 
given transaction in the ongoing of everyday life. 

Of course there is a sense in which we can never 



The Law of Service. 97 

know all the will of God, for "the secret things 
belong unto the Lord our God: but those things 
which are revealed belong unto us and to our chil- 
dren forever, that we may do all the words of this 
law." We cannot know what is in the future for us 
nor what our employment in heaven will be, except 
that "we shall serve him ,, ; but for all practical pur- 
poses it is declared in his Word that "he hath ap- 
pointed us to know his will." 

Our Chief Business. 

Let us remember, then, that our chief business in 
life is not to be happy, or successful, or famous, 
nor to do the best we can and to get on honestly in 
the world, but to do the will of God. We are not 
primarily to do his work, but to do his will. 

The spirit of the world says: "I come to push my 
way; I come to make a living; I come to accumu- 
late ; I come to make a name in the world ; I come to 
shine in society; I come to have a good time." But 
our divine Lord said : "I come not to do mine own 
will, but the will of him who sent me." And "as 
he was, so we are in the world." His business is 
our business. We are not to have our own way, 
nor to please ourselves, but to do the will of God. 

So, according to the teaching and ministry of 
7 



98 Life and Service. 

Jesus Christ, the law of the kingdom of God is the 
law of service; for our Lord declared: "Even as 
the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but 
to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." 
He spent his entire ministry explaining, teaching, 
proclaiming the kingdom of God, and illustrating 
the law of service. He insisted that this law of 
service must be inspired by love, declaring that the 
compassionate love of God for a lost world moved 
him to give "his only-begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal 
life." He threw down the challenge to his disciples 
through all time, "If ye love me, keep my command- 
ments," and "If a man love me, he will keep my 
words, and my Father will love him, and we will 
come unto him and make our abode with him." 

St. Paul taught that love is the greatest thing in 
the world, and that unless our service springs from 
love, it profits us nothing. For he says : 

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and 
have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling 
cymbal. 

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all 
nrysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so 
that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am noth- 
ing. 

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and 



The Law of Service. 99 

though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it 
proflteth me nothing. 

Love . . . beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all 
things, endureth all things, . . . never faileth. 

Measured by Sacrifice. 

Our Lord also taught, both by precept and exam- 
ple, that this law must be measured by sacrifice, and 
he illustrated it even to the surrender of his own 
life. He stipulated as the first condition of disci- 
pleship the element of self-denial, for he said plain- 
ly: "If any man will come after me, let him deny 
himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. 
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but 
whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same 
shall save it." 

Rendered to God. 

This service must be rendered to* God. We "can- 
not serve God and mammon," but we can serve 
God with mammon. We cannot serve God and so- 
ciety. We cannot serve God and education. We 
cannot serve God and business. We cannot serve 
God and politics. We cannot serve God and the 
Church. All these things must conform themselves 
to the will of God and come under the law of serv- 
ice to him. Our mission in life is to serve God; 
and we must serve him with mammon and business 



ioo Life and Service. 

and society and education and politics, or let them 
all go and serve God ! Peter and John answered the 
Sanhedrim "We ought to obey God rather than 
men." And we need not be afraid of the results of 
serving God; for if we "seek first the kingdom of 
God and his righteousness.," we shall find life and 
food and raiment and all else that we need. 

The Law of Service in Nature. 

This law of service in the kingdom of God is no 
exception to the rule, for the same law is written in 
the heaven above, and in the earth beneath, and in 
the waters under the earth, and applies to things both 
animate and inanimate. Even the dust of the street 
and of the field has its office. It gives beauty to 
the sky. It makes the blue of the sea and furnishes 
the canvas on which the sun paints the glory of the 
morning and evening. To the dust in the higher 
atmosphere we owe the formation of the mists and 
the clouds with their gentle rains instead of cloud- 
bursts and destructive torrents. Consider the serv- 
ice of water, which covers three-fourths of the 
earth's surface and furnishes the native element of 
the tribes of fishes and myriads of other forms of 
life which could not exist except in the waters. 
Contemplate the service of the clouds in conveying 



The Lazv of Service. 101 

the bounty of the sea back to the thirsty land and 
how they conserve moisture and pour it out in the 
form of refreshing showers. Think also of the 
service of the streams in bearing back to the ocean 
what it had given to the clouds by evaporation and 
how they furnish channels for transportation, nour- 
ish the forests, cheer the fields, and run factories. 
The winds blow where they will and facilitate evap- 
oration, carry rain clouds far into the land, aid in 
precipitating vapor, purify the atmosphere, fill the 
sails of the ships, scatter the seed of the field and 
forest, bear the fertilizing pollen from flower to 
flower, from plant to plant, and from tree to tree. 
So also the mineral, vegetable, and animal species 
have their essential uses and contribute to the order 
and happiness of mankind. 

The Law of Service Fundamental. 

According to the teaching of our Lord, the one 
who ranks all others in the kingdom of God is not 
the one who knows the most, enjoys the most, nor 
the one most indulged or most served, but the one 
who himself best serves the rest. This distinction 
makes the law of service not incidental, but funda- 
mental in the Christian life. 

There is a very radical difference between this 



102 Life and Service. 

Christian law of service and the commercial law of 
service. A fundamental law in commerce is demand 
and supply. Goods may be offered for sale which 
cost a great deal of time, skill, and money; but if 
they are not wanted, they have no commercial value. 
Another fundamental law of commerce is that of 
exchange, exchanging value for value. Markets 
may be glutted with the necessaries of life, and men 
may be perishing for lack of them; but if they have 
nothing to offer for them, business stagnates, and 
the stream of commerce ceases to flow. 

In every civilized community there are a thou- 
sand services, an exchange of which is effected 
through the common medium of money, which rep- 
resents them all. In the industrial and social worlds 
there may be rendered an unwilling service, but such 
service is always slavish and degrading to him or 
her who renders it. 

The unique law of Christian service is inspired 
by love and measured by sacrifice, and this is the 
service to which we are challenged by our high call- 
ing of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, and of which 
we have a glorious example in Him. 

The Highest Note Ever Struck. 
The note of service sounded by our Lord is the 
highest ever struck in the teaching and practice of 



The Lazu of Service. 103 

altruism. In the light of such teaching and with 
such an illustrious example before the Church for 
nineteen hundred years, it is remarkable how slow 
we have been in measuring up to our obligations and 
privileges. But are we not now making progress? 
There are signs upon every hand that humanity, 
touched by the Spirit of Christ, is waking up, and 
that in religion our provincialisms and narrow per- 
spectives are giving way to world-wide visions. 

The New Meaning of Words. 

The broadening of certain words in common use 
is indicative of a brighter day and a better service 
in the kingdom of God. 

For a long time the word "patriotism" simply 
meant the love of country, and we were satisfied 
with that definition. But, looking more closely into 
the word, we find the larger and better significance 
of patriotism to be, not love of country alone, but 
love and loyalty to countrymen. That new concep- 
tion brings us to something better and more practi- 
cal. There is no reference in the word to red-white- 
and-blue bunting, nor to "rocks and rills and templed 
hills," nor to constitutions, administrations, or po- 
litical parties. So the claims of the word and the 
urgency of our day is not love of country alone, but 



104 Life an d Service. 

love and loyalty to countrymen. Love of that ab- 
stract thing called country has been an easy and 
cheap affair of politicians; but the true patriot loves 
his countrymen and seeks their welfare in every pos- 
sible way, and he is always and everywhere loyal to 
them, so that in no case will he take the advantage 
of them or serve himself at their expense. He 
makes the cause and interests of his countrymen 
the part and parcel of his own life. 

The word "education," too>, has evolved into a 
larger meaning and has come to be used with great- 
er significance. Our first schools in this country 
were distinctively religious and sectarian. In those 
days men were not far from believing that there 
was a Presbyterian Homer, a Baptist astronomy, 
an Episcopal calculus, and a Catholic Horace. And 
it was all very natural. The world was just waking 
up after a sleep of more than a thousand years, 
The long night of the dark ages, had well-nigh past, 
and mankind was at the dawning of a new day. 
Decisive battles had been fought, new nations had 
been born, explorers had discovered new countries, 
the world had become a bigger world, and civil and 
religious liberty were stirring men's hearts. All 
Europe was agitated over the doctrine of the Refor- 
mation. Rome was busy punishing heretics. Per- 



The Law of Service. 105 

secution was rife ; and light and darkness, truth and 
error were in the throes of a life-and-death strug- 
gle. Our forefathers crossed the seas to build them 
homes in the forests of this new world, where they 
could worship God according to the dictates of their 
own consciences, under their own vines and fig trees. 
Such were the conditions in Europe, such were the 
motives that prompted the God-fearing and liberty- 
loving pioneers to come to these shores, and such 
was the spirit in which they laid the foundations of 
this republic. 

They founded this country upon the Rock of 
Ages, and Jesus Christ was the chief corner stone 
of their building. It is a reproach to the sons of 
these illustrious sires that they permit atheists, skep- 
tics, and infidels to eliminate the Bible from their 
public schools and otherwise dictate the policy of 
the republic. All creeds and all classes of people 
come to our shores and share in the blessings of our 
institutions; but they have no right to dictate or 
shape, and certainly not for the worse, the affairs 
of the republic. The open Bible and the Protestant 
faith are fundamental to these free institutions. 
The colonial fathers never lost sight of God and an 
infallible Book. God's Word was the Palladium of 
their civil and religious liberty, and Christianity the 



106 Life and Service,. 

bulwark of their free institutions. Among their 
first concerns were to build houses of worship and 
schools. They sent their sons to college (their 
daughters did not go) to study creeds and dogmas 
and sacraments and doctrines. As in everything 
else, they reaped from this what they had sown. 
The college in their graduates turned out sectari- 
ans and champions of denominational faiths rather 
than the broader and better type of Christian 
scholars. 

Then came on the agitation over civil liberty, 
followed by the struggles for independence. The 
character of the schools changed. Fathers sent 
their sons to college (their daughters still did not 
go) to study politics and the science of government; 
and the result was politicians, soldiers, and profes- 
sional statesmen. 

A new era dawned more than fifty years ago 
which was more sociological and practical. Men 
began to think that educated womanhood was desir- 
able, and they sent their daughters to college too. 
The result was a fuller, larger, and better life. In 
fact, character was the ideal of our advance toward 
the goal in the work of education. Under the in- 
spiration of this larger meaning of education, the 
thought was not to promote sectarianism, politics, 



The Law of Service. 107 

professional statesmanship, and commercialism, but 
character. That has been the end, aim, and object 
of our best educational endeavors. We have heard 
it on the platform, in the pulpit, in the schoolroom, 
and in every kind of public address. It has been 
read in all the new books and magazines and in 
both the secular and religious press. The word has 
been both used and abused. 

But we are now coming to see, after all our toil 
and trouble, that character is not the end of educa- 
tion, but is the means to a grander end, which is 
service. And while we should emphasize the impor- 
tance of character-building, it is not to be regarded 
as an end in itself. Accordingly, we are advised 
by high authority that the ultimate object of a lib- 
eral education is the fitting of young men and young 
women for service to society. In other words, the 
object of educatipn is altruistic, the service of 
others. 

In his inaugural address at Columbia University 
Dr. Butler said: "The university is bound by its 
very nature to the service of others/' When 
Woodrow Wilson was President of Princeton Uni- 
versity, he said: "Here in America, for every man 
touched with nobility, with every man touched with 
the spirit of our institutions, social service is the 



108 Life and Service. 

high law of duty, and every American university 
must square its standards by that law or lack in its 
national standard." President James, late of the 
University of Illinois, declared that "the object of 
an education is to fit men for service." So we may 
now say that training for service has become the 
conscious object of the higher education. 

The same change in educational ideals is taking 
place in the public schools. Superintendents, teach- 
ers, and school boards are beginning to see that 
public school training must fit the pupils for good 
citizenship, and in its last analysis that means serv- 
ice for society. Hence we are organizing our public 
schools on a more practical basis, and we regard our 
system incomplete unless there be provided a man- 
ual training school where our boys and girls can be 
helped to turn their education to* practical account. 
The demands of our day are for thorough training 
and well-rounded, symmetrical Christian character 
for service to our fellow man in the kingdom of 

God. 

Higher Ideals in Religion. 

Thus have been developed higher ideals in reli- 
gion. We have come to see that the object of mak- 
ing Christians and instructing them in righteousness 
is not for personal safety and selfish delectation, 



The Law of Service. 109 

but that the highest ideal is, Saved and trained for 
service. 

A few years ago the women of the Protestant 
Churches of this country asked permission to help 
save the benighted nations of the heathen world 
and especially to make Christ Jesus known to the 
enslaved and degraded women of pagan and Mo- 
hammedan lands. The Church was wise enough to 
grant their prayers, and to-day there are thousands 
on thousands of Christian women in this country 
who are nobly working at the problem of emanci- 
pating their hopeless and helpless sisters in the 
thralldom of heathen living. They are also helping 
to solve the problems at home by invaluable service 
to Christian education and by uniform benevolent 
endeavors. After the women went to work they 
put the children to work also, and so the minister 
and his former helpers have been reenforced by 
both women and children. As all the world knows, 
they have been bringing things to pass. 

Now, after a long time, seeing the ministers, the 
women, and the children putting themselves under 
this law of service, the men of Christendom in un- 
wonted numbers have heard God's call and are 
moving, and their rallying word has thrilled the 
Church and startled the world. "The evangelization 



no Life and Service. 

of the world during this, generation" is believed to 
be a possibility. It is plain that when the men of 
Christendom are fully aroused the Church will go 
out on its last grand march for the conquest of the 
world for Jesus Christ. This latest movement in 
the Church is rightly interpreting the earliest im- 
pulse of the converted heart to share its blessedness 
with others. 

When Andrew found the Saviour, he told Peter ; 
and when John saw Jesus, he told James ; and when 
Philip was converted, he invited Nathanael to 
"Come and see"; and when Peter was filled with 
the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, he preached 
the gospel in Jerusalem to the multitudes of Par- 
thians, Medes, Elamites, and dwellers in Mesopo- 
tamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, 
Pamphilia, Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about 
Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and prose- 
lytes, Cretes and Arabians. As a result, three thou- 
sand of them were converted and came into the 
Church that day. 

From that eventful occasion the increasing com- 
pany of disciples put themselves under the law of 
service and went forth with a splendid abandon, a 
quenchless zeal, and a mighty faith to witness to 
the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in Jeru- 



The Law of Service. in 

salem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the 
uttermost parts of the earth. In obedience to the 
marching orders of the Church, we must go in like 
spirit ; and the only alternative is, "Go or send," and 
we must "Go or die." 

The White Harvest Fields. 

The fields are still white unto the harvest, and 
the laborers are few. Our Lord's challenge is upon 
us: "Pray ye the Lord of the harvest, that he will 
send forth laborers into his harvest." 

During the War between the States Artemus 
Ward remarked that he had donated a good many 
brothers and cousins to the war and that he was 
preparing to donate a number more. Many of us 
have followed the example of Artemus Ward in 
donating other people to the service of God in the 
white harvest fields of the world's need, reserving 
ease to ourselves. But that will not pass with the 
Head of the Church. We cannot consistently pray, 
"Thy kingdom come," and ask God to send others 
into the vineyard to labor for man's release from 
Satan's power unless we are ready to answer that 
prayer and go ourselves. 

When we have dreamed dreams and had visions, 
we need the spirit of Isaiah, who cried out: "Here 



112 Life and Service. 

am I; send me." On an old Greek coin was 
stamped the image of an ox, a yoke, and an altar, 
the significance of which was "ready for service or 
for sacrifice." 

The law of service in the kingdom of God chal- 
lenges you and me to this lofty standard of life, and. 
like the ox on the Greek coin, we should be "ready 
for service or for sacrifice," even as "the Son of 
man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, 
and to give his life a ransom for many." If the 
young people of our day can be brought to keep 
before them this ideal and put themselves under this 
law of service in the kingdom of God, they will 
make the evangelization of the world possible. If 
so, then in that great day 

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the 
holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his 
glory : 

And before him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall 
separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his 
sheep from the goats: 

And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats 
on the left. 

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, 
Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared 
for you from the foundation of the world: 

For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was 
thirsty, and ye gave me drink : I was a stranger, and ye took 
me in, 



The Law of Service. 113 

Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: 
I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when 
saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave 
thee drink? 

When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in ? or naked, 
and clothed thee? 

Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto 
thee? 

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I 
say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the 
least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. 

May this be the high distinction and happy lot of 
every one who reads this book ! 
8 



CHAPTER V. 
Character-Building. 

"And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith 
virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temper- 
ance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; 
and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kind- 
ness charity." (2 Pet. i. 5-7.) 

St. Peter has catalogued for us the seven graces 
which furnish the material out of which Christian 
character is to be built. Jesus himself is the pattern 
which was shown us on the mount, and we are com- 
manded to make all things according to this pattern. 

By the word "faith," as used in St. Peter's cata- 
logue, we are not to understand the condition of 
justification nor that simplest form of faith which 
is belief upon testimony, but rather the acceptance 
of the whole body of divinity as revealed in Chris- 
tianity, together with a saving faith in Jesus Christ 
as our Saviour from sin. It has the same meaning 
as in Jude, who exhorted believers to "earnestly 
contend for the faith which was once delivered unto 
the saints," and by St. Paul, who exhorted the 
Corinthian saints, saying, "Examine yourselves 
whether ye be in the faith." In other words, this 

(114) 



Charac ter-Building . 115 

faith is identical with the teaching and experience 
of the kingdom of God. 

It was Prof. Henry Drummond who suggested 
that geography, grammar, and arithmetic are in the 
gospel, and so we have all these implied or expressed 
in this catalogue. 

Geography tells us where to find places, and 
when we wish to visit a country or become a citizen 
of it we want to know its geography. And since 
the word "faith" is here interchangeable with the 
expression "kingdom of God," we naturally want 
to know where the kingdom of God is. Some say 
that it is in heaven, the home of the redeemed ; but 
that is the capital of the kingdom of God. Others 
think that it is in the Bible ; but that is the map, the 
guidebook, a treatise on how to enter and promote 
the kingdom of God. And others still say it is the 
Church ; but that is the weekly parade ground and 
battle field by means of which the kingdom of God 
is advanced in the world. Jesus said to his faithful 
followers, "The kingdom of God is within you/' 
and localizes it. 

In this great republic we have all kinds and colors 
of people, and in normal times many of our citi- 
zens travel and trade in other lands. So we cannot 
distinguish the United States by color nor by the 



n6 Life and Service. 

language of its citizens nor by their latitude and 
longitude, but the United States is wherever there 
is found a heart loyal to the Stars and Stripes. 

In like manner you can locate England, Belgium, 
France, and other nations. So wherever there is 
found a heart loyal to Jesus Christ there is the 
kingdom of God, and that is the faith that must be 
reenforced in order to build up a Christian charac- 
ter. 

Every country has its ports and products. In 
the United States cotton is king. In China tea is 
the chief product ; in Australia, wool ; in Java, cof- 
fee and sugar. Standing on the wharf at New 
Orleans, you may know whence all the ships, not 
only from the flags they float, but more particularly 
from their cargo and products. So the kingdom of 
God produces "righteousness, peace, and joy in the 
Holy Ghost"; and wherever in the home, school, 
workshop, or office the clean and straight thing is 
not done, you know the kingdom of God is not there, 
for the kingdom of God is righteousness. 

Grammar also is in this catalogue. The verb "to 
add" is in the imperative mood, and that means "to 
command." The first great lesson in life is to learn 
to respect authority and to obey orders. The child, 
the student, the soldier, and the Christian must all 



Character-Building . 117 

learn this important lesson in order to build endur- 
ing character. 

"Add to your faith virtue." So, besides geogra- 
phy and grammar, we have arithmetic in the text; 
and in the gospel arithmetic the rule of subtraction 
comes first. We are commanded to repent, and 
that means to leave off sin and worldliness and self- 
ishness and self-righteousness. "Let the wicked 
forsake his ways." That is the rule of subtraction 
in the gospel. 

"Add to your faith virtue," which means courage. 
There can be no success in character-building with- 
out courage. Courage is taking the risk of doing 
right. That which takes the risk of doing wrong is 
not courage, but foolhardy desperation. Physical 
and moral courage are the same, for they dare. 
Physical and moral cowardice are about the same 
too, for they fear. Moral cowardice fears for its 
money, its ease, its place, and its popularity. Phys- 
ical cowardice fears for its life, limb, and property. 
Courage says: "I ought, therefore I will." Cow- 
ardice says: "I ought, I'd like to, but it is danger- 
ous; therefore I will not." Courage is a constant 
quality and a fixed principle of the soul, and an 
important element in it is self-respect. No coura- 
geous man was ever lacking in self-respect. A 



n8 Life and Service. 

great soldier declares: "True courage is not the 
absence of fear, but the conquest of it." No sen- 
sible man stands up in the battle line to be shot at 
because he feels no fear, but more often because of 
self-respect. Courage knows the danger, but dan- 
ger is smaller than duty. Cowardice also knows 
the duty, but duty is smaller than the danger. 
Prince Eugene, of Savoy, the great captain, reputed 
to have been the bravest man in Europe in his day, 
said he always had to keep a close watch over his 
legs to keep them from running away with him on 
a battle field. 

Courage is also grounded in conscience and is a 
permanent quality, a staying force, always on guard, 
always at home, and always found standing "four- 
square to all the winds that blow." In everyday life 
courage takes the risk of denying one's self luxury 
and splendor in order to< pay honest debts. In times 
of danger it will take the risk of rescuing others 
from peril. The captain of a sinking vessel will 
remain on the bridge until every passenger is res- 
cued. The engineer of a train will go down to 
death in his cab rather than desert his post and send 
a trainload of passengers to untimely death. In 
business, courage will take the risk of observing the 
Golden Rule, of telling the truth at all hazards, and 



Character-Building. 119 

of suffering from competition based upon commer- 
cial falsehood. In civil life it takes the risk of 
protesting against political corruption or partisan 
slander and of denouncing graft and widespread 
lawlessness. In religious life it takes the risk of 
living above the sordid and worldly experience, of 
being called cranky, of standing up for Christ, and 
of letting one's Christian faith be known in any 
company and in every place. 

The coward is more useless to-day than ever be- 
fore. Courage was never more needed by old and 
young, for these are times that try men's souls. If 
forty centuries looked down upon Napoleon's army 
from the hoary Pyramids, what number of centu- 
ries look to the fighting ranks of heroic souls that 
are doing battle for Christian civilization and world- 
wide democracy at this very hour! People were 
never so closely watched as now, and quailing was 
never so quickly branded with the pale badge of 
cowardice. Courage is wanted for honest, faithful, 
everyday living, for private citizenship, for large 
commercial enterprises, for leadership in great mor- 
al and religious movements, for the discharge of 
sworn duties in high public offices, and for the fear- 
less proclamation of the strait and narrow way in 
civic and national righteousness. 



120 Life and Service. 

Few truly courageous men and women ever die 
by their own hands. It is arrant cowardice to run 
away from the post of duty, however difficult and 
dangerous it may be. Courage is fascinating; and 
one touch of it makes the whole world kin, which 
has been illustrated a thousand times and more. It 
was splendidly exemplified by Grace Darling about 
sixty years ago. It was heroically exhibited by 
Lieutenant Hobson in the feat of sinking the Merri- 
mac and in the cases of thousands of our brave 
boys now in the trenches in France. 

The coward imitates courage, true men admire 
it, chaste women worship it, and children act it in 
their games. It is the soul of art, the inspiration 
of oratory, and the loftiest theme of song. Without 
it sculpture would be mere masonry, painting would 
fade into frescoing, poetry waste away into ballads, 
and music become as mute as the harp that hangs 
on Tara's walls. "Courage lives mostly in humble 
homes and sleeps in shaftless graves." 

Knowledge. 

"Add to your faith courage, and to courage 
knowledge." Knowledge is the second important 
thing to be added in character-building, according 
to our catalogue of graces. The word here means 



Character-Building. 121 

that true wisdom by which our faith is increased 
and our courage directed and preserved from degen- 
erating into rashness. There are many kinds of 
knowledge which do not contribute to the improve- 
ment of morals and religion. 

No branch of physical science professes, to teach 
knowledge of God or to enlighten or govern the 
conscience. There is, however, a connection be- 
tween religious knowledge and morality, but not 
so with mechanics, mathematics, and language. 
Scientists and philosophers, as a rule, are not noted 
for their morality and religion, and it is not the 
best and most helpful way to study religion. And 
while we insist upon the most thorough and com- 
prehensive study of literature, language, science, 
and philosophy, at the same time we must stress the 
greater importance in the economy of life of the 
religious education of children and young people; 
not that we value secular knowledge less, but reli- 
gious education more. 

The nations of antiquity were destroyed through 
dearth of religious knowledge. God said of the 
Jews: "My people perish for lack of knowledge." 
Had they cherished a knowledge of God, of sacred 
things, and of their own interests and dangers, they 
would no doubt have preserved their national a,u- 



122 Life arid Service. 

tonomy down to the present moment, but as a na- 
tion they walked on blindly and perished in their 
ignorance. The same was true of the ancient Egyp- 
tians, Babylonians., Greeks, and Romans. They are 
off the map of the world to-day because of their 
ignorance of God. 

The fact is also true of Churches. Many Church- 
es in ancient and modern times have perished for 
lack of knowledge: ; and we have as illustrations the 
Churches of Palestine and Asia Minor, which have 
for many centuries lived only in name and memory, 
and their ignorance of God and of their sins re- 
moved their candlesticks from them. Knowledge 
not only immortalizes, but emancipates; for Jesus 
said to the Jews that believed on him: "If ye con- 
tinue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed, 
and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall 
make you free." 

Dreaming of freedom and craving for liberty are 
as old as the race; and empirics, charlatans, and 
demagogues in every age have promised it to man- 
kind, but were never able to fulfill the promise. 
Men have sought freedom through force, legislation, 
and civilization, but have failed in the search, be- 
cause, as Jesus said, the truth alone can make men 
free. A knowledge of the truth is the only thing 



Character-Building. 123 

that can emancipate men from self, sin, and every 
other form of slavery. 

Jesus did not talk of the progress of the species, 
nor of the development of civilization, but declared 
that "the truth will make you free." Shackles on 
the wrist do not make slaves; but the loss of char- 
acter, of self-respect, and of honor does make 
slaves of men. The knowledge of God delivers the 
race from the fear of demons, the fear of death, 
the fear of destiny, as also it delivers us in the day 
of temptation. Men yield to temptation because 
they are ignorant of the inevitable consequences of 
their folly and sin. 

Jesus went farther and said: "This is life eter- 
nal, that they might know thee, the only true God, 
and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." There is 
a vast difference between eternal existence and eter- 
nal life. Every soul of man shall exist forever; 
but only those who possess a personal knowledge 
of God in Christ can live forever. "For he that 
hath the Son hath life, but he that hath not the 
Son of God hath not life." And so all life con- 
sists in correspondence with various, environments. 
The artist's life consists in a correspondence with 
his art, the musician with his music, the scientist 
with his science, the philosopher with his philoso- 



124 Life and Service. 

phy ; and to cut them off from these is to cut them 
off from life, and to cut them off from all environ- 
ment is death. 

According to the teachings of our Lord and also 
of science, to know is to correspond, and to corre- 
spond is to live. Life eternal, then, is not simply 
to exist or to live and be conscious, but to know 
God and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent into the 
world. And this knowledge will stand us in hand 

When the sun grows cold, 

And the stars grow old, 

And the leaves of the judgment book unfold. 

Job said, "I know that my Redeemer liveth" ; and 
St. Paul said, "I know whom I have believed, and 
am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I 
have committed unto him against that day." 

Temperance, or Self-Control. 

"Add to your faith courage; and to courage 
knowledge; and to your knowledge temperance. ,, 
The word "temperance" does not occur in the Old 
Testament at all and only three times in the New, 
but the idea pervades the Bible throughout. The 
word means self-control. The reenforcement that 
we are next to make to faith, therefore, is self- 
control — "and to knowledge self-control. " And 



Character-Building. 12$ 

this means, in the first place, that we must control 
our appetites in eating and drinking. 

The Greeks and Romans were our equals in art, 
literature, law, and military discipline; but they 
surpassed us in luxury, and that was their ruin. It 
required eighty thousand dollars to support a sena- 
torial dignity, and from the emperor down the 
pleasures of the kitchen were the most serious pur- 
suits. Cicero paid three thousand two hundred and 
fifty dollars for a table, and a single meal would 
often cost him as much as four thousand dollars. 
The halls of the Emperor Heliogabalus were hung 
with cloth of gold and enriched with jewels. His 
table and plate were pure gold, his couches were of 
massive silver, and his suppers never cost less than 
eight thousand dollars. 

The Christian doctrine of self-control forbids 
luxurious indulgence in anything and forbids every- 
thing that is hurtful, and hence the warnings against 
strong drink: "Look not upon the wine when it is 
red." "Woe unto him that putteth the bottle to his 
neighbor's mouth!" "No drunkard shall inherit 
the kingdom of heaven." 

This doctrine also inculcates the importance of 
controlling temper. Solomon declares: "He that is 
slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that 



126 Life and Service, 

ruleth his own spirit than he that taketh a city." It 
is also against covetousness, which St. Paul declares 
is idolatry. The tenth commandment is equally 
emphatic: "Thou shalt not covet." "Using without 
abusing" the things of this world is the teaching of 
the Scriptures concerning the affairs of this life; 
for the religious life of the Bible is. not ascetic, but 
simple and free from excess, 

Solomon's luxurious living was not after the 
manner of Israel, but the result of importation from 
foreign and heathen customs. The prophets repeat- 
edly denounced luxurious living of the wealthy and 
the growth of self-indulgence generally as foreign 
to the demands of righteousness and certain to bring 
ruin on the nation. 

Our Lord put John the Baptist in contrast with 
those who wore soft raiment and lived in kings' 
houses, and Jesus is our supreme Teacher and Ex- 
ample in all the details of life. He was not an as- 
cetic, but was simple in manner of life and main- 
tained a complete unconcern about his own comforts. 
He insisted on this method of life for his disciples, 
saying: "If any man will come after me, let him 
deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and fol- 
low me." The Christian is required by this doc- 



Character-Building. 127 

trine of self-control to persistently guard his 
thoughts as well as his words and actions. 

The result of self-control is good temper, but that 
does not mean good nature. Good nature comes of 
temperament and is born in us. — no irritability in 
the blood, but a kind of natural sunshine, a born 
contentedness, a sympathetic feeling toward all 
about us. Good humor comes, from pleasant sur- 
roundings, a happy environment, and agreeable cir- 
cumstances. Such a nature is good-humored only 
when everything goes right. When things go 
wrong its good humor departs, and bad humor re- 
turns. But good temper comes from this grace of 
self-control, from the development of the higher 
faculties of the soul, from observation and good 
sense, a knowledge of ourselves and others, and of 
the supremacy of conscience. It is a harmony of 
soul belonging to a well-balanced Christian and is 
an outward and visible sign of an inward and spir- 
itual grace. That grace is the resident and regnant 
Spirit of God in the heart. 

A man cannot be good-tempered while rebelling 
against God, providence, circumstances, and himself 
while his lower nature rules the higher ; for in such 
a condition there will always be discontent. Every 
man who would possess good temper must conquer 



128 Life and Service. 

the evil within him, subdue his passions and appe- 
tites till they obey the voice of reason and God. 
He must form the habit of doing right always and 
everywhere. We cannot make ourselves good-na- 
tured and good-humored; but good temper is the 
result of this grace of self-control, and it is implied 
by the command : "Add to your knowledge temper- 
ance." So it is more than a mood ; for that is good 
humor, which changes with circumstances, and a 
bad-humored man will always put the blame on 
others rather than on himself. 

We speak of the atmosphere as good-tempered 
when it is neither too damp nor too dry; when it 
is neither too hot nor too cold ; when there is nei- 
ther too little electricity nor too much in the atmos- 
phere; and when the day is bright and balmy and 
only here and there a white feathery cloud skirts 
the blue of our skies, but neither darkens the heav- 
ens nor produces a storm. 

We speak of good-tempered steel when it has 
been in the furnace neither too long nor too short 
a time, but when it has come to. that perfection that 
makes a good coach spring and razor blade. The 
storm is necessary to temper the atmosphere and 
the furnace to temper the coach spring and razor. 
And so the grace of God and the discipline of life 



Character-Building. 129 

will develop the quality of self-control; and we 
should listen to the voice of conscience, obey the 
voice of love, and persistently turn a deaf ear to the 
voice of selfishness, for to listen to that voice is to 
be always suspecting others of grievances. But by 
recognizing the hand of God in everything that 
comes to us and by looking hopefully into the fu- 
ture and using the best sense we have, by watching 
and praying and trusting and obeying we shall cer- 
tainly in the end possess the grace of self-control 
and as a result have good temper. 

Patience. 

"Add to temperance patience.'' Patience is an 
indispensable grace, for it is necessary to success in 
every department of life. The farmer, the mer- 
chant, the mechanic, the artisan, and every hewer 
of wood and drawer of water need patience. The 
doctor needs patience and patients, and the patient 
needs patience to patiently endure the ills of his 
ailment. The inventor and the discoverer, the law- 
yer and the client, the judge and the juror, the 
teacher and the pupil, the reformer and the philan- 
thropist, the promoters of religion as well as the 
promoters of everything else need patience. Pa- 
tience is that gracious temper wrought in the soul 
9 



130 Life and Service. 

by the Holy Spirit which disposes us to suffer what- 
ever God sees best to permit to come to us or be- 
stow upon us; for the Christian is upheld by the 
thought that God our Father is directing all for our 
good, and his object is that we may partake of his 
holiness. The present state of mankind renders 
patience absolutely necessary; and we are assured 
that if all our trials are borne in patience they will 
end in triumph, so that we have the greatest in- 
ducement to add patience to our self-control. 

Godliness. 

"Add to patience godliness." The word is used 
only by Paul and Peter. Paul insists upon "the 
doctrine which is according to godliness" and de- 
clares that "godliness is profitable unto all things, 
having promise of the life that now is, and of 
that which is to come." Peter makes it one of the 
seven Christian graces necessary to the perfection 
of character-building. Godliness means the sub- 
stance of religion, or the Christianity that Christ 
taught. The world is full of religious cults and 
the philosophies of men, but we are commanded to 
add to our faith the religion that Christ taught in 
spirit and in substance. Just anything will not do. 
There is but one true religion. There is room in 



Character-Building. 131 

the world for but one religion, and that is the reli- 
gion of Jesus Christ. 

Jesus Christ is the one great disturbing factor in 
the world of sin and sinners. It is as true to-day 
as ever that "He stirreth up the people," and the 
world hates him because "he testifies that the works 
thereof are evil." The world has no particular 
objection to God if he will attend to his own busi- 
ness and confine himself to heaven and not interfere 
with men's plans and conduct. At the peril of his 
Godhood he must not interfere with social matters, 
with business, and especially with politics. Above 
all things, he must not suggest any sumptuary legis- 
lation or interfere with men's personal liberty. 

The world dreads and hates the Holy Man of 
Galilee because he did not interest himself with the 
ordinary affairs of mortals. Peter declared on the 
day of Pentecost: "The kings of the earth did set 
themselves, and the rulers took counsel together 
against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, 
Come, let us break their bands asunder and cast 
away their cords from us." On that black and 
tragic Friday his own nation cried out, "Crucify 
him ! Crucify him !" and through the ages opposi- 
tion to God has been localized into opposition to 



132 Life and Service. 

Christ, and that is the crux of rebellion down to 
this hour. 

At first it was distinctively the person of Christ 
that gave offense. The Jews gloried in the Mes- 
sianic idea, and their national life crystallized 
around that idea; but when the real Messiah came 
they rejected him. Christianity is worthless with- 
out Christ, and everything depends upon his identity 
and his personality. Apart from this central fact 
there is no real Church and no salvation. An ideal 
Christ never did and never will save anybody. No 
man ever satisfied his hunger on theoretical bread 
and ideal water, and no man ever crossed the ocean 
in an ideal ship. To deny Christ's humanity is to 
hold to a Christless Christianity. Some do that, 
supposing they are honoring the Father ; but in so 
doing they are discrediting and dishonoring the 
Son of God, and that is not adding faith to godli- 
ness. Godliness is the religion which Christ taught. 
"Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the 
Father." 

The character of Jupiter made him the supreme 
god of lust, anger, intrigue, and passion, and the 
old Latins assimilated the character of Jupiter. 
The Mohammedans worship one god, but they 



Character -Building. 133 

attribute to him cruelty; and the Turks, reproduce 
that brutal conception of their god in their lives. 

So a Christ different from the one revealed in 
the Bible is no Christ at all. He is there presented 
as meek, lowly, holy, harmless, undefiled, and sepa- 
rate from sinners. He lived a life of self-abnega- 
tion and toil for others. He was loving, trustful, 
humble, unworldly, and obedient even unto death. 
The Jews rejected him because of his character. 
They wanted a Christ of pomp, of power, of 
worldly glory and greatness ; but when he came into 
their capital riding upon an ass, they rejected him. 
The profane world, as well as the Jews, still re- 
jects the real Christ. No man can love Christ and 
hate his character. Think of the millions that bow 
before the cross and kiss the crucifix, calling them- 
selves Christians and yet hating the real Christ! 
Many admire the ethics and the beauty of Christ's 
life, but reject his blood. If we add to patience a 
blood-bought godliness, we shall possess in expe- 
rience "righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy 
Ghost," which wall issue in an attractive, influential 
life. 

Brotherly Kindness. 

"Add to godliness brotherly kindness." The 
Jews called an Israelite by blood "brother" and a 



134 Life and Service. 

proselyte of the faith "neighbor," but they allowed 
neither term to be applied to the Gentiles. Our 
Lord and his apostles extended the term "brother" 
to all believers and the term "neighbor" to all the 
world. Jesus taught the Fatherhood of God and the 
brotherhood of man and said: "Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
mind, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
strength, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy- 
self: on these two commandments hang all the law 
and the prophets," This not only means to enter- 
tain sentiments of love, but to keep the command- 
ments and to show kindness to our fellow man. 
For he said: "In this shall all men know that ye 
are my disciples, if ye have love one for another." 
The first evidence that we have that we are Chris- 
tians is that "we have passed from death unto life, 
because we love the brethren." 

St. Paul took the matter of brotherly kindness 
for granted: "Concerning brotherly love you have 
no need that I write unto you, for you yourselves 
are taught of God to love one another." He ex- 
horts: "Let brotherly love continue." Religion is 
and ought to be determinative of human life in 
general, and so in particular it molds the grace of 
kindness. 



Character-Building . 135 

God is a God of kindness, and he is represented 
as looking upon the people of Israel in Egyptian 
bondage and through his loving-kindness delivering 
them. The Israelites were frequently reminded of 
this, and it was set before them as the ground of 
their obedience. They were not to press nor to vex 
the stranger, but to love him; for they knew the 
heart of the stranger, having been strangers them- 
selves in Egypt. 

Christ reveals God as the potential Father of all 
men. He yearns over the prodigal and longs for 
his return. He uses instrumentalities of kindness 
to induce him to return. Even his severity is kind- 
ness, for "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and 
scourges every one that he receiveth." Our Lord 
says: "He makes the sun to shine upon the evil and 
the good, and sends the rain upon the just and the 
unjust." In all these things God shows his kindness 
to the children of men, and Christ's most effective 
way of revealing God was by his miracles of kind- 
ness. When men respond to that kindness it moves 
them to look upon mankind as God looks upon them. 
The kindness of God is limited, or its form is regu- 
lated by the consideration that righteousness be 
maintained. A holy God cannot confer or bestow 
complete happiness upon unholy men. Repentance, 



136 Life and Service. 

faith, and obedience are required of men, and the 
misery endured while these are absent or deficient is 
but proof of God's kindness, If a man's brother 
sin against him, he must be induced to repent and 
turn from his way. There must not be indifference 
to his sins. To bestow promiscuous benefits upon 
the evil shows no true kindness, but is rather an en- 
couragement to sin. Yet kindness is due all men 
with whom we have to do ; nor should we be unkind 
even to the lower animals. God cares for the spar- 
rows and ravens. The ungodly and sinful call for 
compassionate care in view of their spiritual possi- 
bility. 

There are many ways to show brotherly kindness. 
All men need prayer, sympathy, and encouragement, 
and in giving these we are adding brotherly kindness 
to godliness. This grace demands that we cultivate 
the broadest sympathy and interest in world-wide 
missions, Christian education, organized charity, 
scientific benevolence, and in every possible way 
minister to mankind in body, mind, and spirit. The 
parable of the good Samaritan teaches us that all 
men have claims upon our kindness and that the 
black race, the red race, the yellow race, the brown 
race, as well as the white race, are our neighbors. 
We should never forget that the best thing any of 



Character-Building. 137 

us can do for God is to be kind to his other sinful 
and sorrowing children. We should live in the spirit 
of Sam Walter Foss's little poem : 

Let me live in my house by the side of the road 

Where the race of men go by. 
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong, 

Wise, foolish — so am I. 
Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat 

Or hurl the cynic's ban? 
Let me live in my house by the side of the road 

And be a friend to man. 

There is also a beautiful lesson of brotherly love 
taught in Leigh Hunt's poem, "Abou Ben Adhem" : 

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) 

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace 

And saw within the moonlight within his room, 

Making it rich and like a lily in bloom, 

An angel writing in a book of gold. 

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, 

And to the presence in the room he said : 

"What writest thou?" The vision raised its head 

And, with a look made of all sweet accord, 

Answered : "The names of those who love the Lord." 

"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so," 

Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low, 

But cheerily still, and said: "I pray thee then 

Write me as one who loves his fellow men." 

The angel wrote and vanished. The next night 

It came again with a great wakening light 

And showed the names of those whom God had blessed, 

And lo ! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest. 



138 Life and Service. 

Love. 
"To brotherly kindness love," for love is the 
crowning grace. It is the bond of perfectness, for 
neither earth nor heaven has anything better than 
love. God is love, and he that loveth dwelleth in 
God and God in him ; for, as we have seen, the end 
of all the commandments to be love, and the sub- 
stance of religion is love. When we have added 
this crowning grace, we are complete in Him who 
called us, and the end of our creation and redemp- 
tion is reached. 

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have 
not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. 

And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries 
and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove 
mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 

And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor; and if I 
give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me 
nothing. 



CHAPTER VI. 
Home-Building. 

"Every wise woman buildeth her house." 

The twentieth century has already come, and 
with it has come the new home made of the material 
we have been long preparing. There are some 
things difficult to define, and home is one of them. 
Who can describe the scent of a rose, the flavor of 
a peach, or the aroma of a cup of tea? So it is next 
to impossible to define home. A place of residence 
will not do* ; for one may reside in a hotel, a board- 
ing house, a cellar, a garret, or in a dry goods box 
at the rear of a store, like Huckleberry Finn, but 
you could not properly call any one of these places 
home. In its simplest sense it may be called a place 
of abode. 

As an abode it may be adorned with all the elegance that 
art can create and all the luxury that wealth can procure, 
where the walls are adorned with pictures from the pencils of 
the old masters and the niches filled and the pedestals crowned 
by the mute but elegant marble from the chisels of famous 
sculptors, where by day the light streams through curtains 
of rarest lace and by night falls softly from golden chande- 
liers, where fountains send up their sparkling waters and mur- 
mur their perennial music, where plants from every clime fill 

(139) 



140 Life and Service. 

the conservatory with their beauty and fragrance, where birds 
from the tropics delight the eye with their gorgeous plumage 
and enchant the ear with their ravishing song, and where the 
fruits of every zone and the delicacies of each revolving sea- 
son tempt the appetite and delight the taste. 

Or home may be a place where happiness waits on honest 
industry and where comfort springs from competency rather 
than from affluence and luxury; where father and mother are 
the trees of the family garden, and merry children are the 
birds that sweetly sing in the branches thereof; where there 
are no sudden transitions from wealth to poverty or from 
poverty to wealth, but where the intelligent, industrious classes, 
which constitute the bone and sinew of the republic, the sup- 
port and strength of the Church and State, have their abode; 
where the Bible spreads its banquets of wisdom and love, 
where prayer pours the desires and aspirations of the heart 
into the ear of God, and where praise wafts on high the grati- 
tude of the soul ; where tranquillity abides, where contentment 
dwells, and where love reigns supreme. 

Or home may be a place where wretchedness and want hold 
their ghastly revels; where bare floors, broken furniture, 
scanty fare, hard beds, and tattered garments are symbols of 
distress; where the face never smiles but in the idiotic laugh 
of drunken carousal; where love is consumed by perpetual 
hate ; where parents are living examples of total depravity, and 
their children, born in sin and cradled in crime, are brought 
up for hell ! 

These pictures fairly represent three classes of 
American homes, and to one or the other of these 
all our citizens belong. 

The basis of the Christian home is Christian mar- 



Home-Building. 141 

riage, and the essentials are the union of one man 
and one woman in holy wedlock, together with their 
children. When Eve was brought to Adam, he said : 
"This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my 
flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was 
taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his 
father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his 
wife: and they shall be one flesh." 

Our Lord also said to the captious Sadducees: 
"From the beginning [of the creation] God made 
them male and female. For this cause shall a man 
leave his father and his mother and cleave to his 
wife : and they twain shall become one flesh ; so that 
they are no more twain, but one flesh. What there- 
fore God hath joined together, let not man put asun- 
der." The marriage ceremony beautifully sets forth 
the dignity and sacredness of this divine institution: 
"Which is an honorable estate, instituted of God in 
the time of man's innocency, signifying unto us the 
mystical union that is between Christ and the 
Church ; which holy estate Christ adorned and beau- 
tified with his presence and first miracle that he 
wrought in Cana of Galilee, and is commended of 
St. Paul to be honorable among all men, and there- 
fore is not by any to be enterprised or entered into 
unadvisedly, but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, 



142 Life and Service. 

and in the fear of God." And no human arguments 
or theories, however ingenious and plausible, no hu- 
man legislation by Church or State, can change in 
the least degree the essential basis, character, or 
obligations of the marriage institution, divinely or- 
dained and regulated. Any such attempt is treason 
to God and to the most vital and sacred interests of 
humanity. 

The family is the germ and source of all social 
institutions. The Church and the State come out of 
the family and take their complexion from it. The 
home is also the first and simplest educational insti- 
tution, and in it woman holds first place ; she is the 
principal teacher. The late Dr. Mulford used to 
say: "Sociology is the coming science, and the fam- 
ily holds the key." 

It should be the chief business of her who builds 
a home to promote and conserve the happiness of 
that home. What are most needed in America to- 
day are happy homes. If people are happy in their 
homes, they are strong in both Church and State; 
but if they are weak in their homes, they are not 
strong anywhere. The first and most fruitful 
source of unhappiness in the home grows out of 
improper marriages. If people marry for conven- 
ience or distinction or fortune or title or luxury or 



Home-Building. 143 

grandeur, they may get what they marry for, but 
happiness will not be a resident in their homes. 

Some years ago there went the rounds of the 
labor press a poem which vividly hits off the motive 
of many a so-called marriage : 

"O, wilt thou take this form so spare, 
This powdered face and frizzled hair, 

To be thy wedded wife, 
And keep her free from labor vile, 
Lest she her dainty fingers soil, 
And dress her up in gayest style 

As long as thou hast life?" 
"I will." 

"And wilt thou take these stocks and bonds, 
This brown-stone front, these diamonds, 

To be thy husband, dear? 
And wilt thou in his carriage ride, 
And o'er his lordly home preside, 
And be divorced while yet a bride 

Or ere a single year?" 
"I will." 

"Then I pronounce you man and wife, 
And with what I've together joined 

The next best man may run away 
Whenever he a chance can find." 

Another peril to the home is the facility with 
which divorces can be obtained. There are two 
thousand seven hundred courts in the United States 



144 Life and Service. 

where divorces can be obtained. And besides these, 
some legislatures possess that function and right. 
One has only to watch the courts granting divorces 
to see how flimsy and whimsy are some of the rea- 
sons for granting divorces. The legislature of Flor- 
ida some years ago passed a law giving a man the 
right to obtain a divorce from his wife upon the 
plea of insanity. 

Another peril to the American home, and espe- 
cially among the people who move on the upper 
stratum of society, is the increasing paucity of the 
family circle. France is the only country in Europe 
whose families are as persistently small as they are 
in Massachusetts; and the only difference is that 
France has become alarmed, and Massachusetts is 
indifferent. But this crime against the home in this 
country is not confined to New England. The lack 
of parental authority, idleness, self-indulgence, and 
sordid worldliness could be mentioned as evils that 
threaten the home, undermine character, weaken the 
State, and enervate the Church. 

But the most serious peril to the home is the lack 
of religion; for with a strong, healthy religious 
atmosphere pervading that primitive and sacred 
place, all evils of the family would be corrected, and 
the Church and State would be safe. The ancient 



Home-Building. 145 

Greeks and Romans regarded every family as a 
Church in a certain sense, and the father was the 
high priest of his household, and every home had 
its household gods. It was so in a measure with 
the Jews, with the Hindus, and with every ancient 
race. The Roman Catholic Church, of all the Chris- 
tian denominations, more nearly approximates that 
venerable and sacred idea among the ancients. The 
Catholics forbid divorce, look after the home, and 
jealously guard the training of the children. They 
say that if you will give them the children until they 
are seven years old, you can have them after that 
period. 

Home is the scene of the dearest ties of earth, the 
scene of wedded love, which means far more than 
the love of David and Jonathan or the love of Da- 
mon and Pythias, where the freest confidence, the 
completest sympathy, and the most reciprocal devo- 
tion obtain. 

For a beautiful and buoyant young woman with 
bright anticipations of the future to leave father 
and mother and home and to give herself, body and 
life, to the one man of her choice is love's surren- 
der. For a man, strong, noble, brave, and great in 
purpose, to link his destiny with the one woman of 
his choice is one of love's victories. And for these 
10 



146 Life and Service. 

two to take each other for better or worse, in sick- 
ness or health, in poverty or wealth, in honor or 
reproach, to the exclusion of all others, the fortunes 
or misfortunes of the one to be those of the other 
until death — this is a union of love. 

The influence and character of the home are far- 
reaching in developing life and fixing destiny. Dr. 
Josiah Strong, in "Our Country," portrays vividly 
the effects of the home life. He says: 

On the Western Reserve are two townships adjoining 
which were settled by men of radically different character. 
The southern township was settled by a far-seeing and devoted 
Christian. The settlers were carefully selected. None but 
professing Christians were to be landholders. As soon as a 
few families had moved into the township public worship was 
commenced and has ever since been maintained without inter- 
ruption. A Church was organized under the roof of the first 
log cabin. At the center of the township, where eight roads 
meet, was located the church building, fitly representing the 
central place occupied by the service of God in the life of the 
colony. Soon followed the schoolhouse and the public library. 
And there in the midst of the uncongenial forest, only eight 
years after the first white settlement, they planted an academy 
for the promotion of higher education. At an early period 
several benevolent societies were organized, and here was 
organized the first school for the deaf and dumb in the State. 

The northern township was first settled by an infidel, who 
seems to have given to the community not only his name, but 
in a large measure his character also. He naturally attracted 
men of the same sort. It is said that he expressed the desire 



Home-Building. 147 

that there might never be a Christian church in the township ; 
and though this desire was not gratified, the general character 
of the township has been irreligious. One of the best colleges 
of the West was founded within five miles, but it is uncertain 
that any young man of that township ever took a degree in 
the college or finished the course of study in that institution. 
Seven of its young men entered professional life, but none of 
them gained a wide reputation. 

On the other hand, the southern township is widely known 
for its moral and religious character, its wealth and liberality, 
and for the exceptionally large number of young men and 
women it sends to colleges and seminaries. It has furnished 
many members of the Legislature and Senate. It has been 
fruitful in ministers and educators, some of whom have gained 
national reputations. From this little village of a few hundred 
inhabitants have gone forth men to college professorships 
(East and West), to the Supreme Bench of the State, and to 
the United States Congress. 

The general character of these townships was 
fixed at the beginning o>f the century by the first 
families that settled them. These cases are repre- 
sentative of many others in our country. The fam- 
ily stamp can be fixed through generations for a 
much longer period than a hundred years. There is 
no calculating the power and influence of a life or 
a home for weal or for woe, for good or for evil. 

A rich young nobleman was passing through a 
village in Cornwall a few years ago and became very 
angry because he could not be accommodated with 



148 Life and Service. 

wines and liquors in the. town. Roughly accosting 
an old man, he said : "Why is it that I cannot get a 
glass of liquor in this wretched little village?" The 
old man knew to whom he was talking and, taking 
off his hat and making a low obeisance, said: "My 
lord, about one hundred years ago a man named 
John Wesley came to these parts." And the old 
peasant walked on and left the young lord and each 
of us something to think about. 

The many make the household, 
But only one the home. 

We hear much about the coming man, but we are 
more concerned about the woman who has already 
come. One has said: "Woman rules the world for 
good or evil. The real man is the. woman he car- 
ries in his heart. If she be an angel of a woman, 
she will make him an angel of a man; but if she be 
a devil of a woman, look out for him." 

The past century has been fraught with great 
changes and wonderful developments on all lines of 
progress. The power of steam was discovered and 
utilized for the advancement of civilization during 
the past century. Robert Fulton set the first steam- 
boat afloat on the Hudson River in 1807. Down to 
the year 1820 there was not an iron plow to be 
found in all the world. Men rode for the first time 



Home-Building. 149 

on a railroad train in 1830, and in the same year 
they began to use lucifer matches. Up to that time 
mankind depended on the tinder box for fire. In 
1838 steam communication was established between 
Europe and America, and the first telegram was sent 
over the wires in the year 1844. Since that time 
cablegraphs, telephones, electric lights, and electric 
cars have been established as necessary conveniences 
to our modern life. Time would fail me to tell of 
the graphophone, X-ray, liquid air, flying machine, 
wireless telegraphy, and the thousand other things 
that have come and that will come to contribute to 
the convenience and comfort of the twentieth-cen- 
tury home. It has been a century of research and 
discovery in the realm of science; for, with the ex- 
ception of astronomy, the modern sciences have 
been creations of the nineteenth century. It has 
been a century of missionary propagandist^ for 
the world was shut up and the gospel shut out of 
the Oriental nations and the islands of the sea at 
the beginning of the past century. But now all the 
doors of the nations are open, and missionaries have 
entered all lands. 

Another evidence of progress is found in the 
great and ennobling ideas that have become the per- 
manent possession of mankind during the past hun- 



150 Life and Service. 

dred years. Prominent among these is the honor 
paid to womankind and her increasing elevation and 
recognition as the equal of her brother. Early in 
the past century it was no unheard-of thing for an 
Englishman to sell his wife into servitude. As late 
as 181 5, the year of the battle of Waterloo and the 
year that marked the close of the war between this 
country and England, there were thirty-nine cases 
of wives exposed to public sale like dumb driven 
cattle in Smithfleld, England. 

Under the Roman law woman had no voice in 
the government of the family. The father was the 
sole center of authority. The husband had supreme 
authority over his wife's property. She could be- 
queath nothing to her own relatives. Her husband 
had also over her the power of life and death. 
Among the old Teutonic tribes the husband had the 
right to sell, to punish, and even to kill his own, wife. 
In China, Japan, and India women are still in abject 
bondage. Confucius regarded woman as no better 
than a slave and as difficult to* manage. "Ten 
daughters do not equal one son," he said. The fol- 
lowing are some of his maxims: 

When young, woman must obey her father and elder 
brother. 

When married, she must obey her husband. 



Home-Building. 151 

When a widow, she must obey her son. 

She must not marry a second time. 

She must never issue orders to those outside of her home. 
k Her chief business is to prepare wine and food. 

She must not be known for good or evil beyond the thresh- 
old of her own apartments. 

She must not attend a funeral beyond the limits of her own 
state. 

She must not come to any conclusion on her own delibera- 
tion. 

Furthermore, he described five classes of women 
who should not be taken in marriage: 

1. The daughter of a rebel. 

2. The daughter of a disorderly father. 

3. The daughter of parents whose grandchildren are crimi- 
nals. 

4. The daughter of a leper. 

5. The daughter who has lost her father and elder brother. 

Confucius also gave seven reasons to justify a 
man when he wanted a divorce: 

♦ 1. If the wife be childless. 

2. If she be unfaithful to her bridal vows. 

3. If she be envious of the clothes of other women or of her 
own husband. 

4. If she be dishonest. 

5. If she be sickly. 

6. If she disobey her mother-in-law. 

7. If she talk too much. 

In China you cannot buy a boy at any price, but 
you can purchase a girl for a dime. 



152 Life and Service. 

The only hope that Buddha, gave to a woman was 
that she might turn to a man sometime or other, 
for he taught the monstrous doctrine of the trans- 
migration of souls; and so the burden of every 
Buddhist woman's prayer is that in the next world 
she may be a man. 

Brahma did not allow a woman to read the holy 
Veda nor to pray, teaching that she is soulless with- 
out man. The Shaster teaches: 

She must serve her husband as she would a god. 

When in his presence she must keep her eyes upon him to 
receive his commandments. 

When he speaks she must be quiet. 

If she speaks unkindly to him, she must be divorced with- 
out delay; and when he is dead she must burn on his funeral 
pyre. 

Mohammedans say: "Women are the whips of 
the devil." "Trust neither a king nor a horse nor a 
woman." 

The women of Egypt, of Italy, of France, of Ger- 
many, of Britain, and of America are liberated in 
proportion to the increasing light of Christian civi- 
lization. 

One of the last things Frances Willard said on 
her deathbed was: "Only the golden rule of Christ 
can bring the golden age of man." Great advances 
have been made during the last half century; but 



Home-Building. 153 

woman's rights and powers have not been fully rec- 
ognized, nor have her grave responsibilities yet been 
fully laid before her. She is emphatically the home 
builder; and God designs that she should primarily 
invest her time, strength, and talent in building the 
home. She alone makes home a possibility, and 
here she is queen of her realm and ought to reign 
with undisputed right. Without her there might be 
a place of abode, a palatial residence, but there could 
be no home. 

What is it that causes the tears to start when you 
think of the old home that is broken up forever? 
The house is there, and yonder are the old barn and 
lot, and here is the old well with the moss-covered 
bucket, and over the whitewashed fence is the old 
orchard with the apple trees that bloom every spring 
just as they did in the long ago, and in the front 
lawn are the great old oaks that have kept sentinel 
from your earliest recollection. But it is home no 
more. She who made that place home to you is 
gone, and that place can be home to you no more. 
Dryden beautifully says, "Home is the sacred ref- 
uge of our life"; and the real truth is: "Where 
mother is, is home." The burden of rearing and 
training the children devolves upon her. She main- 
tains a place in society for the family, or it is not 



154 Life and Service. 

maintained. She interchanges and exchanges the 
conventionalities of life in the community; and if 
anybody goes from the home to relieve the dis- 
tressed, to sympathize with the sorrowing, and to 
weep with those that weep, it is the mother of the 
home. 

The greatest woman of the nineteenth century 
has spoken and written some wise words on the 
prerequisites of young women in order properly to 
fit them for society and for building happy homes: 

As I gain experience I see more and more distinctly that 
a young lady must have accomplishments to be of value to 
society. That august tyrant takes every candidate for prefer- 
ment into its ranks : "What can you do for me ? Can you tell 
me a story, make me a joke, or sing me a song? I am to be 
amused." Society is not for scholarly discipline. Study is 
for private life. Benefactions, loves, hates, emoluments, busi- 
ness — all these go on behind the scenes. Men grow learned 
and good and great otherwise than in society. They ponder 
and delve and discover in secret places. Women suffer and 
grow uncomplaining in toil and sacrifice and learn that life's 
grandest lesson is summed up in four simple words, Let us be 
patient — in the nooks and corners of the earth. Into society 
they may bring, not their labors, but the fruit of their labors. 
Public opinion, which is the mouthpiece of society, asks not of 
any man, "Where did you do this? when did you accomplish 
it ?" but, "What have you done ? I do not care for the process ; 
give me the results." Society is to everyday life what recess 
is for the schoolboy. If it has been crowded from this its 



Home-Building. 155 

right relation, then it is for everyday thinking members of 
society to aid in its restoration to its true position. Let no 
cynical philosopher inveigh against society. Let none say 
that its fruits are simply heartlessness and hypocrisy. Man is 
a creature of habits. When among his fellows he does his 
best, studiously at first, unthinkingly afterwards. I venture to 
assert that the Man who was greater than any other man that 
walked on the earth was the kindest, the best-bred, the most 
polite. Society is not an incidental, unimportant affair; it is 
the outward sign of an inward grace. Let us, then, if we can, 
be graceful, cultivate conversational ability, musical talent, 
improve our manners and our beauty, if we are blessed with 
it. Harmonious sounds cheer the heart. Fitness is admirable. 
All these are means of happiness to us who have sorrow 
enough at best. It is no light thing to perform the duties we 
owe to society, and it is better to approximate than to ignore 
them. 

These are the words of a wise woman; and if our 
American women would lay them to heart, society 
would be the gainer and our homes would be the 
happier. 

There were three powerful causes that operated 
to elevate woman under primitive Christianity : 

1. She was from the beginning a recognized fac- 
tor in the Christian Church. 

2. She was in those first centuries of persecution 
among the most heroic of the martyrs who> died at 
the stake or in the arena of the Coliseum at Rome 
for the love of Christ. 



156 Life and Service. 

3. The discipline of the early Church not only 
protected the sanctity of marriage, but also* recog- 
nized woman as the equal of man: 

Man is greater in logic; woman is greater in intuition. 
Man is eminent in reason; woman is refined in feeling. Man 
is more impressionable through the intellect; woman is more 
easily convinced through the sensibilities. Man is the more 
self-reliant; woman is the more self-sacrificing. Man is 
strong; woman is affectionate. Man is the more courageous; 
woman is the more virtuous. Man sins through selfishness, 
woman through vanity. 

If woman would be her best and do her best, she 
must keep before her the highest ideals. She cannot 
magnify her position in society and in the home by 
simply observing the customs and habits of her im- 
mediate circle and community and by simply per- 
forming the duties which necessity lays upon her, 
although she may do them well. 

There is a beautiful portrait of the ideal woman 
drawn by the master hand of the divine Artist in the 
last ch ■ pter of the book of Proverbs; and if the 
twentieth century will only reproduce that ideal 
woman in the American home, we shall soon become 
a strong, prosperous, and eminently happy people. 
Let us look at this interesting picture: 

She worketh willingly with her hands. She laugheth at the 
time to come. Strength and dignity are in her clothing. Her 



Ho me-Building. 157 

clothing is fine linen and purple. She openeth her mouth with 
wisdom. The law of kindness is in her tongue. She spread- 
eth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her 
hands to the needy. A woman that feareth the Lord, she shall 
be praised. She eateth not the bread of idleness. She is like 
the merchant ships: she bringeth her food from afar. She 
layeth her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the spindle. 

This is God's picture of an ideal home builder; and 
if our women would build after this divine pattern, 
our homes would be what God demands, they should 
be. But it is not fair to' demand of woman brick 
without straw. She is man's complement, and in 
the very constitution o>f things man must be the in- 
spiration of the home builder. She, too, makes 
some demands, but she alone can make these de- 
mands reasonable and possible. 

Bring me men to match my mountains ; 

Give me men to match my plains ; 
Men with empires in their purpose 

And new eras in their brains. 

And with such a woman and such inspiration to the 
home builder, earth would again bloom as a garden 
of the Lord. 

Woman has to do with little things. 

Think naught a trifle, though it small appear; 
Small sands the mountain, moments make the year, 
And trifles life. 



158 Life and Service. 

Franklin said: "Dost thou love life? Then do 
not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made 
of." 

Gladstone said : "Believe me when I tell you that 
thrift of time will repay you in after life with a 
usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams 
and that the waste of it will make you dwindle, 
alike in intellectual and in moral stature, beyond 
your darkest reckonings." 

Horace Mann says plaintively: "Lost, yesterday, 
somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden 
hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No 
reward is offered, for they are gone forever." 

William Matthews says: "Lost wealth may be 
replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost 
health by temperance or medicine; but lost time is 
gone forever." 

This is the best country and the best age in all 
the history of all the lands for home-building. Miss 
Willard says: "There are no homes on earth where 
woman is revered, believed in, and individualized in 
character and work so thoroughly as in America, 
where her children rise up and call her blessed." 

Virginia Penny has written a thoughtful and in- 
teresting book entitled "Think and Act," and in this 
book she compares woman in a number of countries: 



Home-Building. 159 

The English woman is respectful and proud; the French 
woman is gay and agreeable; the Italian woman is passionate; 
the American woman is sincere and affectionate. 

With an English woman love is a principle; with a French 
woman love is a caprice; with an Italian woman it is a pas- 
sion ; with an American woman it is a sentiment. 

A man is married to an English woman ; he is united to a 
French woman; he consorts with an Italian woman; and is 
wedded to an American woman. 

An English woman is anxious to secure a lord; a French 
woman, a companion; an Italian woman, a lover; and an 
American woman, a husband. 

An Englishman respects his lady; the Frenchman esteems 
his companion; the Italian adores his mistress; the American 
loves his wife. 

The Englishman at night returns to his house, while the 
Frenchman goes to his establishment, the Italian to his re- 
treat, and the American to his home. 

When an Englishman is sick, his lady visits him; when a 
Frenchman is sick, his companion pities him; when an Italian 
is sick, his mistress sighs over him ; when an American is sick, 
his wife nurses him. 

The English woman instructs her offspring; the French 
woman teaches her progeny; the Italian woman rears her 
young; while the American woman educates her children. 

The history of great men is the history of happy 
homes and great mothers. Byron's mother was 
proud, ill-tempered, and violent; and the world 
knows of the corrupt life and sad ending of her 
illustrious son. He died saying: 



160 Life and Service. 

My life is in the sere and yellow leaf; 

The flowers and fruit of love are gone. 
The worm, the canker, and the grief 

Are mine alone. 

Sir Walter Scott's mother was a lover of poetry 
and painting. It is no wonder, then, that her son 
became the greatest of Scotland's novelists and 
poets. Patrick Henry's mother was remarkable for 
her conversational powers. Her illustrious son is 
properly called the American Demosthenes. George 
Washington's mother was generous and true and 
pious ; and he who was "first in war, first in peace, 
and first in the hearts of his countrymen" illustrated 
the noble virtues of his mother to< a remarkable de- 
gree. John Quincy Adams's mother was distin- 
guished for her intelligence and piety, and her son 
said of her: "I owe all that I am to> my mother." 
The mother of John Wesley was extraordinary for 
her intellectuality, piety, and executive ability, and 
she is justly called the "mother of Methodism." 
Benjamin West, a distinguished artist, ascribed his 
renown to a mother's kiss. When a youth he 
sketched his baby sister asleep in her cradle. In 
that rough outline his mother saw the evidence of 
genius, and in maternal pride she kissed her boy. 
In after years West would frequently say: "That 



Home-Building. 161 

kiss made me an artist." We never get away from 
the old home nor away from the influence of moth- 
er. 

Home, home, sweet, sweet home ! 

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. 

To build a happy home is the highest triumph of 
woman. There is nothing on earth comparable to 
it. What are crowns and scepters compared with 
the distinguished honor of sending from the home 
a Washington, a Wesley, a Robert E. Lee, or a 
Woodrow Wilson? What is the glory of Queen 
Elizabeth compared with such a mother and such an 
achievement ? 

Some one has said: "Motherhood is life's richest 
and most delicious romance." Henry Ward Beecher 
said: "No man was the father of Jesus Christ, but 
a woman was his mother." The inventive genius 
of a wise woman will lay under contribution every 
good thing within her means for the pleasure of her 
house. In addition to her own sweet spirit, she will 
procure every possible physical comfort in food and 
carpets and curtains and books and music and games 
and flowers and pleasant and profitable conversation 
and well-selected and inspiring company at times. 

And this is the true sphere of woman's influence. 
This is her realm by divine appointment. Not on 
ii 



1 62 Life and Service. 

thrones as a ruler, not in legislative halls, not in short 
hair and meager dresses, but at home! God has 
appointed her the guardian of infancy, the instructor 
of childhood, the companion of youth, the partner 
of manhood, the comforter of old age. Here let her 
diminish sorrow by sympathy, heighten joy by gay- 
ety, soothe by tenderness, dignify by intelligence, 
and elevate by devotion. 

The building of a happy home is woman's great 
mission to this world, and the demand was never 
more imperative as we pass on into the new century. 
If she succeeds, all our problems are solved. This 
is her part, and it is man's to seek his highest earth- 
ly happiness in such a home and in the blessed com- 
panionship of this divinely appointed home builder. 
And every true man would be proud of such a home 
and with Goldsmith would sing: 

In all my wanderings around this world of care, 

In all my griefs — and God has given me my share — 

I still had hopes my latest hours to crown, 

Amid these humble bowers to lay me down; 

To husband out life's taper at the close, 

And keep the flame from wasting, by repose. 

I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, 

Amid the swains to show my book-learned skill, 

Around my fire an evening group to draw, 

And tell of all I felt and all I saw; 

And as a hare, whom hound and horse pursue, 

Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, 

I still had hopes, my long vexations past, 

Here to return — and die at home at last. 



CHAPTER VII. 
Financing the Kingdom — The Tithe Law. 

"The tithe is the Lord's, and it is holy." 

The question of Church finances is forcing itself 
upon our attention with a growing interest and an 
increasing intensity. "How much owest thou unto 
my Lord?" confronts every follower of Jesus 
Christ, and every candidate for Church membership 
should be impressed with the financial obligations 
that devolve upon him as a member of the corporate 
body of Christ. 

A Baptist minister in Louisville, Ky., had the 
habit of asking every new member whom he re- 
ceived: "How much can you contribute weekly or 
monthly for the support of the Church ?" And if a 
ready answer were not given and the new member 
was uncertain about his contributions and did not 
know that he could pay anything, the pastor asked 
another question: "How much, then, do you want 
the Church to set aside for you? We have just 
two classes of members in this Church, those who 
support the Church and those who are supported by 
it." Every member of the Church should be in- 

(163) 



164 Life and Service. 

duced and encouraged to become a real supporter 
and coworker in the kingdom of God. 

It is presumed that we are all agreed that "the 
Church is of God and will be preserved until the 
end of time for the promotion of his worship and 
the due administration of his word and ordinances, 
the maintenance of Christian fellowship and disci- 
pline, the edification of believers, and the conversion 
of the world ; that all of every age and station stand 
in need of the means of grace which it alone sup- 
plies; and that it invites all alike to become fellow 
citizens with the saints and of the household of 
God." And, furthermore, we believe that essential- 
ly the Church has been the same in all the ages and 
through all the dispensations — the same Author and 
Head, the same essential conditions of membership, 
the same mission, the same purpose, the same divine 
plan for its maintenance and support. And with- 
out question it is the biggest thing in God's universe. 
It transcends all kingdoms and empires and exceeds 
all earthly institutions. And I do not believe that 
God Almighty has launched this divine institution 
and sent it out on its world-wide mission of con- 
quest and left it without a sane and practical method 
of support. It is to me a foolish supposition to 
think that God would commission his Church to "go 



Financing the Kingdom. 165 

into all the world, and preach the gospel to every 
creature" and leave the important matter of its 
support to the whims, caprices, impulses, and sordid 
selfishness of men. And I further believe that a 
close study of the Word of God will clearly reveal 
that the divine method for supporting the Church is 
found in the old tithe law. 

The practice of tithing was an ancient custom not 
only among the Semitic races, but amongst others as 
well. Dr. Adam Clarke says: "Almost all nations of 
the earth have agreed in giving a tenth part of their 
property to be employed in religious uses." And, 
as a matter of fact, we find the practice among the 
ancient nations of India, Chaldea, Arabia, Assyria, 
Greece, and Rome. As an institution of religion it 
must have been organic; for, like the Sabbath, it 
was observed from the beginning. Long before the 
Jews were a nation or the Mosaic laws were given, 
tithing was practiced. 

The promptness with which Abraham gave tithes 
to Melchizedek on returning from the war of the 
kings laden with spoil indicates that it was in his 
day a well-known practice among the nations. After 
Jacob's vision at Bethel he vowed a vow, saying: 
"If God will be with me and will keep me in this 
way that I go and will give me bread to eat and 



1 66 Life and Service. 

raiment to put on, so that I come again to my fa- 
ther's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my 
God ; and this stone which I have set up for a pillar 
shall be God's house, and of all that thou shalt give 
me, I will surely give the tenth to thee." Mind you, 
he did not say one-tenth or a tenth, but the tenth, 
showing that he was accustomed to the practice of 
paying the tithe. 

The tithe law and the Sabbath law were both 
enacted by Moses and formally incorporated into 
the Levitical institutions of Israel. The Sabbath 
law was formally incorporated in these words: 

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 

Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: 

But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy god : in 
it thou shalt do no work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, 
thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor the 
stranger that is within thy gates : 

For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, 
and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day: where- 
fore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. 

And at the same time and place the tithe law was 
enacted : 

And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the 
land, or the fruit of the tree, is the Lord's : it is holy unto the 
Lord. 

And concerning the tithe of the herd, or of the flock, even 



Financing the Kingdom. 167 

of whatsoever passeth under the rod, the tenth shall be holy 
unto the Lord. 

He shall not search whether it be good or bad, neither shall 
he change it: and if he change it at all, then both it and the 
change thereof shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed. 

These are the commandments, which Jehovah commanded 
Moses for the children of Israel in Mount Sinai. 

So these laws of the tithe and the Sabbath are 
about equal. They stand or they fall together. 
They had a similar origin and a similar incorpora- 
tion, they are both primitive and divine institutions 
of religion, and they both belong to organic law. 
And both the Sabbath and the tithe are called holy, 
and they both are reserved for God. He gives us 
six days in which to do all our work, but he reserves 
the seventh for himself and commands us to keep 
it holy and rest and worship him on that day. He 
opens his hand and supplies all our wants and be- 
stows riches and treasures upon us as a reward 
to the hand of industry and allows to us nine- 
tenths of all we earn; but the tenth is his, and he 
reserves it for himself, just as the Sabbath is for 
his service. "All the tithes are mine, and they are 
holy." By this law God becomes a partner in busi- 
ness, and he demands a faithful division of the 
products of our labor and the results of our indus- 
try. Just as a faithful observance of the law of the 



1 68 Life and Service. 

Sabbath recognizes God in our time, so a faithful 
observance of the tithe law recognizes God in our 
business and the accumulation of our money. And 
both the Sabbath and the tithe law teach "reverence, 
partnership, honesty, and unselfishness." 

The Sabbath is nowhere formally recognized and 
reenacted in the New Testament; but its necessity 
is obvious just the same, and the Christian Church 
has never wavered in teaching its observance. And 
why should there be any question in anybody's mind 
about the tithe law being God's method and plan for 
the support of his Church in this dispensation as 
well as the Jewish? It was practiced by Abra- 
ham and Jacob and legislated into the Levitical 
code by Moses and persistently urged upon the peo- 
ple by all the prophets; and Malachi, the last of 
Judah's seers, accused the people of robbing God 
because they refused to pay the tithe. 

As it was not found necessary to reenact the 
Sabbath law in the New Testament, so there was no 
formal reenactment of the tithe law, but our Lord's 
approval of it was equivalent to a formal reenact- 
ment. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, in 
which he laid down the fundamental principles of 
his kingdom : "Think not that I am come to destroy 
the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, 



Financing the Kingdom. 169 

but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven 
and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise 
pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever 
therefore shall break one of these least command- 
ments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the 
least in the kingdom of heaven." The tithe law is 
included in these commandments, for after its enact- 
ment it is recorded : "These are the commandments 
which the Lord commanded Moses for the children 
of Israel in Mount Sinai." And to neglect or to re- 
ject or to fail to observe it is to break this law. And 
our Lord put his indorsement upon this law when he 
said: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
crites ! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cum- 
min, and have omitted the weightier matters of the 
law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to 
have done, and not to leave the other undone." And 
if that ought of the Master's does not prove that the 
tithe law is now in force in the Christian Church, 
then I fail to apprehend a very plain statement. If 
that law were abolished and was no longer in force 
in the Christian Church, then our Lord missed a 
great opportunity to- say so. But as he said on this 
occasion, "These ye ought to do, and not leave the 
others undone," we should do violence to every prin- 
ciple of interpretation not to infer from his com- 



170 Life and Service. 

ment that this law is still God's, method for financing 
his Church. 

St. Paul is even more clear and emphatic in rec- 
ognizing the perpetual obligation of the. tithe law. 
In relating his experience, as he did many times and 
on many occasions, he declares that he was a Phari- 
see of the straitest sect and, of course, believed in 
and practiced the tithe law. In his argument for 
Christian liberality in the first epistle to the Corin- 
thians he says that "God ordained that they which 
preach the gospel shall live of the gospel." And, as 
we know, God's ordained plan for those who preach 
the gospel is found in the tithe law given by Moses : 
"Behold I have given the children of Levi all the 
tenth in Israel for an inheritance, for their services 
which they serve, even the service of the tabernacle 
of the congregation." This ordinance is what the 
apostle has reference to when he declares that "God 
ordained that they which preach the gospel shall live 
of the gospel." 

And yet there are those who affirm that the tithe 
law was done away with in the old dispensation of 
Judaism. It is true that types and symbols and 
sacrifices and the Jewish ceremonials were fulfilled 
and done away in Christ. But not so with the moral 
precepts, reverence, worship, obedience, trust, and 



Financing the Kingdom. 171 

love, but witnessing to him unto the uttermost parts 
of the world. When was any one of the ten com- 
mandments done away? And where do you find 
that "God ordained that they which preach the gospel 
shall live of the gospel," except in the establishment 
of the tithe law by Moses for all Israel? And if it 
be insisted that this law has been done away with, 
what plan are we going to adopt to take its place ? 
Shall we set aside God's ordained plan and consent 
for vain man's pride, ignorance, sentiment, and 
fickle impulses to dictate what men shall pay to the 
support of the gospel and for the salvation of the 
lost world ? 

The Church of God will never be adequately sup- 
ported nor the cause of God properly maintained 
until Christian people recognize God's method for 
the promotion of Christ's kingdom. You can no 
more adequately support the Church by the volun- 
tary gifts of its membership than you can support 
the State or municipality by voluntary taxes. There 
are hypocritical claims made by Churches and insti- 
tutions that they live by faith and draw their sup- 
port from the voluntary offerings of members and 
friends. But it is well known that such institutions 
adopt the best methods of advertising what they 
are doing and what they need and, by papers and 



172 Life omd Service. 

tracts and cards and traveling agents and constant 
harangues, stir up the people everywhere to give, 
and to give freely and largely, and then proclaim to 
the world that God takes care of them and sends to 
them everything that they need without asking any- 
body for a cent ; that their Church and schools and 
orphanages and their missions are all run on faith ! 
The tithe law properly understood and faithfully 
observed is the best method in the world and at 
the same time evinces the most intelligent faith in 
operating the Church in obedience to the march- 
ing orders of Christ. And the reason for this is 
that it is a divine plan and God's method. Such 
observance will vindicate divine wisdom and meet 
every necessity of the Church at home and abroad. 

The Church has lost incalculably for lack of busi- 
ness methods in the conduct of her finances. The 
world looks contemptuously upon our claptrap de- 
vices and wheedling schemes for drawing unwilling 
contributions out of the people for the cause of God, 
and many men turn away from the Church in dis- 
gust. Such things, together with the increasing de- 
mand for money to carry forward the kingdom of 
God in the earth, has made the recent Laymen's 
Missionary Movement an absolute necessity. Intel- 
ligent laymen throughout Christendom are waking 



Financing the Kingdom. 173 

up to the necessity of doing something to remove the 
reproach from the Church of Jesus Christ in the 
light of its world-conquering mission. They are 
joining hands with their pastors in an effort to 
arouse the men of the Church to do the Lord's busi- 
ness in a big-hearted and open-handed way. It is 
pitiable and disgraceful for preachers and laymen 
any longer to consent for the Church of God to 
remain in the attitude of a beggar in the broad day- 
light of an advancing civilization and in full view 
of an inviting white harvest field. 

Observance of the tithe law was not all the Jew 
did in the long ago ; for, in addition to the paying 
of his tithe for the support of religion, he gave an- 
other tithe for religion and patriotism, for the ex- 
penses of the three yearly feasts, and every third 
year he levied on his products another tenth for 
charity and benevolence. Besides, he constantly 
made freewill offerings in recognition of God's fa- 
vor for special blessings of health and prosperity. 
And so the doctrine of the tithe law teaches that the 
tenth is the minimum of what every follower of 
Christ should pay to the cause of God and benevo- 
lence. Contributing the tenth was not considered as 
giving under the old dispensation, but paying; and 
so it should be regarded now. And not to faithfully 



174 Life and Service. 

deliver it up was charged as "robbing God," accord- 
ing to Judah's last prophet, and so also it must be 
understood in the light of our Lord's teaching and 
that of his servant Paul. 

It has been said that the tithe law is unjust and 
that it imposes a hardship on the poor man. But 
the answer to that objection is that it is no harder 
now on the poor man than when Moses incorporated 
it into the code of Israel given by God on Mount 
Sinai. The Jews did not complain of injustice by 
that law, and perhaps there were as many poor men 
among them as among us. Our Heavenly Father 
has always been compassionate toward the poor; 
and the Jews, both rich and poor, uniformly ob- 
served this law until they backslid or lost faith in 
God. Besides, it is no more unjust than the Sabbath 
law, for that law requires more of our time than the 
tithe law demands of our money, and the poor as 
well as the rich observed the law of the Sabbath; 
and we are all agreed that the poor, of all others, 
need the Sabbath and should observe it, and all the 
governments and States of Christendom have pro- 
tected the Sabbath by legislative enactments. 

Another popular objection is that many cannot 
afford to pay the tenth. But the answer to that 
objection is that God is our partner in business con- 



Financing the Kingdom, 175 

cerns; and if he furnishes life and health and weath- 
er and the conditions and opportunities of wealth, 
and if he stipulates that "the tithes are the Lord's" 
and we refuse to faithfully pay over his tenth, 
whether it be much or little, it is downright dis- 
honesty. It is a species of meanness and insolence 
for any man to say that he cannot afford to pay a 
just debt, it matters not how poor he is. It is 
equivalent to saying that some people cannot afford 
to be honest. To say it is to fail to recognize God 
in our business affairs and shows a palpable lack of 
faith in God. He has said: "Him that honoreth me, 
I will honor." The Jews are an illustration of this 
promise ; for when they were obedient and observed 
this law, they were prosperous and became the rich- 
est people on earth. And the same truth is demon- 
strated to-day, for God still blesses and honors the 
men who trust and obey him; and in a peculiar 
way God's blessings attend the people to-day in 
things material and in things spiritual who observe 
this tithe law. But temporal and material prosper- 
ity should not be the motive for observing the tithe 
law or any other statute, but we should observe it 
because God commands it. 

Another objection is that the tithe law makes the 
Church cost too much. It is a fact that the Church 



176 Life and Service. 

is a costly institution. It has always been costly. 
The tabernacle; in the wilderness cost about a million 
dollars, and some have estimated that Solomon's 
Temple cost about one hundred million dollars, and 
to support the temple and tabernacle was costly. 
The same is true to-day. To* build and maintain 
churches, to found missions and support them, to 
equip schools and sustain them, and to< administer 
organized benevolences of the Church cost money, 
and a great deal of it. 

But who is it that supports all of these great in- 
terests? Whose money does it? It is God's tithe 
that does it all, and it really costs us nothing. It is 
sordid and mean and wicked for a man who* is with- 
holding God's tenth to talk about the Church cost- 
ing too much. God's part of our products pays all 
the expenses; and if we faithfully pay it over, it is 
sufficient to carry forward all these great enterprises 
of his Church, and it really costs us nothing. All 
he demands is that we make a faithful report and 
conscientiously pay over his tithe, and our simple 
obedience will solve all our own problems:, and he 
proposes to pay all the bills and defray all the ex- 
penses, and you and I are out nothing. That is a 
simple, practical statement of the case. 

Again it is objected that "the Jewish Church was 



Financing the Kingdom. 1JJ 

the Jewish State, and to put us on an equality with 
the Jews we must deduct from our tithes what we 
pay for taxes in support of the government/ ' But 
that objection is obviously a mistake. The tithe was 
never used for the support of the State, but devoted 
solely to the sons of Levi, who received no inherit- 
ance among the tribes of Israel, and hence God or- 
dained the tithe for this ministerial family. Not 
one dollar of the tithe went to the support of the 
State; but it belonged to the Church, was collected 
by the Church, and was used for the Church. The 
prophet Samuel did tell the people the manner of the 
king they were asking for and said he would levy 
a tax of one-tenth on them for his support ; but that 
had nothing to do with the Lord's tithe, and no pro- 
vision was made to pay the State's taxes out of the 
Lord's treasury, but it was used solely for the 
Church. A fund was created for the relief of the 
stranger and the poor by levying a tax on the people 
for that purpose, but the Lord's tenth was for the 
maintenance of the Church and the ministry . 

Another objection is urged that the law cannot 
be enforced. That objection means that men can- 
not under grace be brought to a degree of intelli- 
gence and honesty and consecration to keep the 
commandments and obey God. And if that be true, 
12 



178 Life and Service. 

the gospel is a failure, and there is not enough power 
in the gospel to save men. Such an objection is a 
lamentable reflection on the gospel, and it is dishon- 
oring to Christ. It is. not only a sad commentary 
on the saving efficacy of the gospel, but also on the 
helpless and hopeless condition of humanity. But 
we have too* many examples to> the contrary to be- 
lieve that man cannot be redeemed to the point of 
common honesty, faith, and obedience. There are 
scores and scores of men who are practicing a 
square deal with God at this point. We have in our 
day an increasing army who are bringing all the 
tithes into the storehouse and who are receiving the 
uncontainable blessings of heaven in things temporal 
and in things, spiritual as well. 

And yet another objection is urged, that it is im- 
possible to ascertain the tithes. Well, for certain 
peculiar circumstances this might be a perplexing 
question ; but it is very clear in most cases, and the 
earnest, honest man who wants to observe the law 
can find the proper basis and sufficient light to guide 
him to right conclusions in dealing with this prac- 
tical question. Wage earners, salaried men, and 
professional men should have no difficulty in finding 
a working basis. The farmer and the merchant 
might find some difficulty in ascertaining what class 



Financing the Kingdom. 179 

of expenses should be deducted from the gross pro- 
ceeds before computing the tenth. But the light of 
reason and the light of Scripture and the light of 
the Holy Spirit given in answer to prayer will en- 
able business men to see what the whole tithe is ; for 
"if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who 
giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, and 
it shall be given him." 

But let us never forget that we are acting for 
God, and he will hold us responsible for the use we 
put our money to. This question is now up before 
the Church, and, like Banquo's ghost, it will never- 
more down until the whole Church is stirred over 
its relations to the money problem, for the solution 
of this question will solve the problem of the world's 
salvation. Many of the saintliest men and women 
all over Christendom stand for the tithe law and 
are greatly blessed in its faithful observance, and 
many Churches too are practicing God's method in 
supporting the Church ; and every one, without ex- 
ception, testifies to unprecedented prosperity from 
the time the system was inaugurated in the adminis- 
tration of Church finances. 

The Laymen's Missionary Movement in all our 
Churches stands for proportionate and systematic 
giving, and by that term we mean, as a rule, paying 



180 Life and Service. 

the tithe. And so the leaven is at work, and it will 
evidently go on effervescing and inoculating until 
the whole lump is leavened. And when this question 
of money is settled and the Church is thoroughly 
aroused and the tithe law is faithfully and con- 
scientiously observed, then we shall go out on the 
last grand march for the conquest of the world for 
our Lord and Redeemer. And when this gospel 
shall have been preached in all the world for a wit- 
ness unto all nations, then there will appear the 
signs of the coming of the Son of Man with power 
and great glory. 

And toward this grand consummation the whole 
creation moves. And the prayer of every believing, 
expectant heart should be: "Come, Lord Jesus; 
come quickly." 



CHAPTER VIII. 
Evangelism ; or, Winning the Lost. 

"He that winneth souls is wise." 

In the largest and most comprehensive sense of 
the word, "evangelism" means the promotion of the 
gospel, whether by direct or indirect methods, 
whether by definite and persistent endeavor to de- 
tach men from sin and worldliness and lead them 
to personal saving faith in Christ or by instructing 
and training those already won to lives of sacrifice 
and service. Evangelism, therefore, comprehends 
evangelistic endeavor, Christian education, religious 
philanthropy, and every work that is exercised to 
save men from sin, develop them in character, and 
train them for sacrificial service. In this view we 
must give due credit and emphasis to the Sunday 
school, Christian institutions of learning, Church 
literature, religious benevolence, and every altruistic 
effort in the name and Spirit of Christ for the moral 
and social improvement of men. 

In a narrow and less comprehensive sense, evan- 
gelism means to bring men out of the darkness of 
sin into the light of the gospel and to rescue them 
from the power of Satan unto God; in other 

(181) 



1 82 Life and Service. 

words, to "convert men from the error of their 
ways" and to bring them back to God. In this sense 
evangelism has directly to do with that crisis in 
Christian experience described by the word "con- 
version," which includes both justification and re- 
generation. 

Whatever may be the theory entertained of the 
moral status of children, and however conscientious 
we may be in their moral education and training, 
and however innocent and well informed they may 
be, Christian character and acceptable service in 
the sight of God are out of the question until they 
have personally accepted Jesus Christ as Saviour 
and Lord. They may never knowingly and willfully 
have sinned, yet they must personally and conscious- 
ly accept Christ, and such decision and acceptance 
is the child's conversion. If they have ever know- 
ingly and willfully done wrong, broken the law of 
God, they must repent and be converted just as oth- 
er sinners are converted. If it be that from the 
dawn of conscious responsibility they have elected 
and persisted in conscientious right-living, their 
conversion consists simply in a glad and willing 
acceptance of Christ as their personal Saviour. 

Earnest and intelligent evangelism will make 
much of Decision Day and other special occasions 



Evangelism. 183 

for the conversion of children and young people. 
On such occasions and in all our dealings with chil- 
dren the parents, ministers, teachers, and Christian 
workers generally should deal faithfully with them 
and help them to understand the conditions of sal- 
vation which apply to a sinning child as well as to 
a sinning adult. These conditions of repentance and 
faith should be made especially plain to their minds, 
for they are capable of meeting the conditions of 
conscious conversion. The most conscientious care 
should be used to prevent them from stumbling in 
this vital matter. 

Obviously our topic suggests a narrower and less 
comprehensive sense of the word — namely, to con- 
vert men, to turn them from being sinners to being 
saints, to make them Christians, and to replace their 
selfish ideals with high and lofty conceptions of the 
life of the Spirit. 

Evangelism is primal to the thought, purpose, and 
plan of the gospel. It is the chief and great work 
of the Church not simply to make Christ known to 
men, but to bring men to Christ as "the Lamb of 
God, which taketh away the sin of the world." For 
this purpose Christ trained his disciples and endued 
them with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. 
Under the inspiration and power of this divine fur- 



184 Life and Service. 

nishing he sent them out to turn men from darkness 
to light and from the power of Satan unto God, 
"that they might receive the forgiveness of sins." 

Timothy was ordained a bishop in the apostolic 
Church, but St. Paul charged him to "do the work 
of an evangelist." Stephen and Philip were elected 
deacons in the Jerusalem Church to serve tables, 
but they also evangelized and as laymen were zeal- 
ous and successful soul winners. 

Evangelism was the chief business of the apos- 
tolic Church, and it should still be the Church's con- 
cern. Any Church that wears not this insignia of 
soul-winning will have difficulty in establishing its 
apostolicity. Among the apostolic gifts and the 
orders of the early times was an order of evangel- 
ists who gave themselves up unreservedly and abso- 
lutely to the one work of making converts. They 
traveled through the land, calling men to repent- 
ance, promoting revivals, and winning the lost to 
Christ. Apostles, prophets, pastors, and teachers 
had other functions besides the evangelistic; but 
these men had but one work, and they gave them- 
selves to that work. Others could teach, shepherd, 
decide questions of doctrine and polity, and foretell 
coming events, but the evangelist kept to his task 

It is encouraging to observe the movement of the 



Evangelism. 185 

Church back to apostolic methods and simplicity, 
and the formal recognition of the evangelist and his 
work is an omen of good to the Church of the fu- 
ture. It will require apostolic faith, apostolic sim- 
plicity, and apostolic power to grapple successfully 
with the problems that confront us and to evangelize 
the world in this generation. 

We have hitherto been busy working at other 
problems, looking after the machinery of complex 
Church organizations, and discussing nonessential 
things instead of the evangelistic preaching of the 
old-time gospel which alone "is the power of God 
unto salvation to every one that believeth." During 
the past twenty-five or thirty years many had 
seemed to forget the real business of the Church; 
but, thank God! we are waking up, and many are 
convinced that our real business as ministers and 
Christians is to get men saved. We are not yet 
awake as we should be ; but things are astir, and we 
are at the beginning of a great awakening. Ere- 
long we shall come into an open vision of the Christ 
and be surprised that we had so long delayed to do 
the very thing he charged us with from the begin- 
ning. 

In many of our great Churches little or nothing 
is done from year to year to get men converted. 



1 86 Life and Service. 

No evangelistic sermons are preached, no revivals 
are held, and nobody is saved; and yet the men in 
charge of these Churches are, as a rule, talented, 
instructive, and interesting as preachers; but if they 
preach not directly to lost men in warning, appeal, 
and persuasion, the natural conclusion is that they 
have not the evangelistic spirit, and consequently 
have no heart or relish for such work. Our bishops, 
connectional officers, and others who spend all their 
time on other themes, working at other interests and 
never warn, persuade, or entreat lost men to flee 
from the wrath to come and be saved from their 
sins, make the impression on the rank and file of 
the preachers and people that there are other things 
more important than evangelism. Such examples 
and impressions are very demoralizing. I have had 
some of these brethren to candidly confess that they 
once knew how to preach to sinners and how to get 
people converted, but that through having been busy 
running an office and administering the interests of 
a great Church they had forgotten how to call men 
to salvation. Such a confession is both pathetic and 
tragic. 

This chief business of the Church, though coming, 
is not yet at the forefront anywhere as it should be, 
for the evangelistic spirit should absolutely domi- 



Evangelism. 187 

nate every Church and every Christian life. The 
normal Church will bring men to Christ in season 
and out of season. Periodic revivals have their 
place and their mission, but the normal Church will 
foster the revival spirit the year round. In some 
Churches which are alive to evangelism and whose 
pastors are anxious to save men a series of evan- 
gelistic meetings lasting for two weeks is held once 
a year. For the rest of the year too often the whole 
question is dismissed, and nothing in the soul-win- 
ning business is done. 

But the pastors are not alone to blame for the 
lack of evangelism — in fact, they have accomplished 
about all that has been done in this line of progress. 
Educated away from the main business of the 
Church and its proper mission to the race of men, 
it looks like we have been trying to solve the prob- 
lem of the world's salvation by excessive organiza- 
tion and so have little time to spare from looking 
after the machinery. The complex organization of 
the material interests of the Church and the increas- 
ing number of officials necessary to look after these 
interests have greatly contributed to our demorali- 
zation and to our impaired efficiency in aggressive 
evangelism. Even* new department of the already 
thrice complex machinery calls for a new officer, 



1 88 Life and Service. 

and of course the office must be dignified ; and these 
men who should be preaching the gospel and help- 
ing to promote a world-wide evangelism are forced 
to expend their time, talent, and energy to hatch up 
something new in plan or method to make the office 
go. 

Many have not depended upon the blessed old 
gospel and its power to save men, but on organiza- 
tion and Church machinery. By the time we get 
through with the saints' calendar and all the days 
set apart by the Church and then keep up with the 
procession and observe Church Federation Day, Old 
People's Day, Independence Day, American Sunday 
League Day, Temperance Day, Mothers' Day, Fa- 
thers' Day, Red Cross Day, Tuberculosis Day, and 
all the rest, and then devote one Sunday to every 
official of every new department in the Church and 
look after scores of worthy claims from without the 
Church, what time have we for preaching the gospel 
and promoting evangelism? 

I am not censorious, and I do not wish to be un- 
derstood as opposed to all proper organization ; but 
I submit that it is time for us to call a halt in creat- 
ing offices and multiplying machinery to be looked 
after and to address ourselves to the main business 
of preachers and Churches in publishing the glad 



Evangelism. 189 

tidings of great joy and of constraining lost men to 
come to Christ. If we are really in earnest about 
the conversion of the world, I submit that we should 
address ourselves to the real business of Christ, 
looking after the lost. 

If the real and primal work of the Church is to 
evangelize, then the Church that is not evangelistic 
is out of commission, It cannot demonstrate its 
claim to recognition as a Church of Jesus Christ. 
And the preacher, whatever office he may fill, and 
however learned and eloquent, who is not bringing 
men to Christ has no logical place in the Christian 
ministry. I cannot see how any man can consistent- 
ly consider himself a true minister of our holy reli- 
gion unless he makes good by winning souls to 
Christ. I cannot think that Christ regards any man 
as his representative unless he converts sinners from 
the error of their ways. For "he that winneth souls 
is wise," and "they that be wise shall shine as the 
brightness of the firmament, and they that turn 
many to righteousness as the stars forever and 
ever." 

As this work of the Church is evidently primal 
and vital, it goes without saying that it should be 
made prominent, and our best wisdom and energy 
should be exercised to promote it faithfully and 



190 Life and Service. 

successfully. Yes, evangelism should be organized ; 
but we do not need any increase of machinery, and 
certain we are that we do need some good man to 
look after the machinery of organized evangelism. 

It is a most encouraging sign that this vital ques- 
tion is now claiming the attention of the Church. It 
is clear that God is calling us to think it out to the 
end. The word has been caught up by all the 
Churches ; and our bishops, editors, schoolmen, pre- 
siding elders, and pastors are talking it and writ- 
ing about it. Some are earnestly promoting it, 
and many are thoroughly convinced that a wide- 
awake and aggressive evangelism will solve the most 
difficult problems that confront us. We need it to 
save our own nation as well as the nations beyond 
the seas. "Christ was put to death because of our 
offenses, and rose again for our justification," and 
he charged his disciples to go everywhere and pro- 
claim this justification and testify to it. And by 
putting first things first and thereby promoting evan- 
gelism we can best promote the cause of Christian 
education, missions, Church extension, the Bible 
cause, and every other great interest. 

In every local Church we could have a committee 
on evangelism, but that might with decided advan- 
tage be made a part of the work of the laymen's 



Evangelism. 191 

missionary committee. The pastor could give to 
this committee special instruction in the work of 
soul-winning, and he could do this either in special 
meetings with them or at the midweek prayer meet- 
ing. This instruction could be utilized at once, and 
a personal evangelism could be launched forthwith, 
and so the work could begin in the local Church 
without delay. 

There are pastors in many Churches who have a 
habit already of making one service on Sunday 
evangelistic; and if all our pastors would do so, we 
should soon have the fires of an evangelism kindled 
that could be fanned into a mighty flame. With this 
simple organization earnestly, persistently, and 
faithfully worked, there would inevitably result the 
conversion of many sinners and be created an evan- 
gelistic spirit in the Church which would give us a 
revival the year round. 



CHAPTER IX. 
John Wesley in Social Service. 

"Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the 
end of that man is peace." 

It would be interesting to present John Wesley 
as a scholar, a writer, a commentator, an evangelist, 
and an organizer; but my present task is to show 
him as a social worker. I do> not think one will find 
the words "social worker," "social service," or even 
"sociology" in the many printed sermons or mis- 
cellaneous writings of John Wesley. In fact, these 
are new words that have become popular during the 
past twenty years, but they describe a condition and 
a service much older than Wesley. I am sure one 
will not find these popular words in the Gospels and 
Epistles of the New Testament, but the teachings 
and ministry of our Lord and his disciples were 
preeminently social and practical. 

Without intending it John Wesley became the 
greatest social reformer of his day and of the 
English-speaking world. From the beginning to 
the close of his sixty-six years' ministry he labored 
intelligently, persistently, and successfully in the 
field of social service. One of the rules of the Holy 
(192) 



John Wesley and Social Service. 193 

Club of Oxford University was that its members 
should give away in relief of the poor all they had 
left after providing for their own necessities. 

Through all the years of his eventful ministry 
Mr. Wesley lived on twenty-eight pounds, or about 
one hundred and forty dollars, a year and gave the 
rest away. In his first year as fellow in Lincoln 
College his allowance was thirty pounds. He lived 
on twenty-eight pounds and gave the rest away. 
The second year he received sixty pounds, lived on 
twenty-eight, and gave thirty-two away. The third 
year he received ninety pounds. He still lived on 
twenty-eight and gave the rest away. The fourth 
year he received one hundred and twenty pounds, 
spent twenty-eight on his living, and gave the rest 
away. He persisted to the end of his life in spend- 
ing only twenty-eight pounds a year on himself and 
giving the rest away. 

He lived up to the teaching of his great sermon 
on "The Use of Money," which largely influenced 
the lives of early Methodists and which should still 
be the governing principle of all Christians in their 
relations to money. The three divisions of that very 
practical sermon are: First, make all you can; sec- 
ond, save all you can ; and, third, give all you can. 
In his "Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Reli- 
13 



194 Life and Service. 

gion" he threw down this challenge in addressing 
himself to his brother clergy: "If I leave behind me 
ten pounds, above my debts and books or what may 
happen to be due on account of them, you and all 
mankind bear witness against me that I lived and 
died a thief and robber." He kept his word and 
died poor. During his ministerial career he gave 
away more than one hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars. 

The Poor and Social Service. 

Poverty and suffering everywhere and always 
appealed to Wesley. He made no distinction be- 
tween the worthy and the unworthy poor. In the 
severe winter of 1740 at Bristol many were put out 
of work on account of the severity of the cold and 
freezing weather. He addressed himself to their 
necessities, and from his own limited resources and 
what he could collect he fed from one hundred to 
one hundred and fifty per day. During the same 
winter he visited the twelve hundred or thirteen 
hundred French prisoners at Knowle, near Bristol, 
and found them poorly clothed. The same day he 
wrote an appeal in their behalf to Lloyd's Evening 
Post and in a sermon that evening presented the 
distressed condition of those prisoners to the con- 



John Wesley in Social Service. 195 

gregation and raised the money to supply them with 
warm and adequate clothing. 

When Wesley was eighty-two years old he 
tramped through the slush and snow, ankle-deep, in 
the streets of London for five days to raise funds to 
supply the needs of the poor of his society. He 
raised a thousand dollars and relieved them, but his 
exposure brought on a severe illness which nearly 
cost him his life. Early in the history of the Meth- 
odist movement he began to utilize his societies for 
the relief of those in distress. He called upon them 
all to contribute as much as a penny a week and 
what clothing they could spare for the relief of the 
poor and suffering. 

Industrial Organizations. 

As early as 1740 Wesley converted the society 
room in London into a carding, spinning, and knit- 
ting factory. He employed a teacher and put the 
poorest of the women of his societies to work. For 
four and a half months he kept numbers of them 
from want and illness in this way. In the spring of 
the next year the demand grew for relief work, and 
he increased the capacity of his workshop for card- 
ing, spinning, and knitting so as to be able to em- 
ploy more poor women. His plan was to employ all 



196 Life and Service. 

the poor women in this industry and to pay them 
the usual price for their work and then add to their 
support as they had need. He engaged supervisors 
over this work, and they were to visit the poor and 
to make weekly reports to the stewards of the soci- 
ety. In addition to the plan of work for these su- 
pervisors and visitors, he furnished them with the 
following suggestions to govern them in their work: 

1. Be frugal in the administration of relief. 

2. Give none that asks for relief an ill word nor even an ill 
look. 

3. Do not wound them if you can help it. 

4. Expect no thanks from man. 

In visiting the sick and the poor he proposed to 
them four rules for their work, which are good 
rules for all places and times: 

1. Be plain and open in dealing with souls. 

2. Be mild, tender, and patient. 

3. Be cleanly in all you do for the sick. 

4. Be not nice or fastidious. 

Medical Dispensary. 

Mr. Wesley organized the first free dispensary of 
which we have any record in the history of the 
world. The Finsbury Dispensary of London, which 
was organized twenty years later, was modeled after 
Mr. Wesley's dispensary. He also utilized hospitals 



John Wesley in Social Service. 197 

for the treatment of the sick and found them less 
expensive than caring for and treating the sick in 
their own homes. He asked advice of several phy- 
sicians for the treatment of the sick, but, he con- 
fessed, without much advantage. He saw the poor 
people neglected, pining away, and many families 
broken up because they were unable to pay for the 
services of a physician. He at last decided to pre- 
pare himself to meet this emergency, so that the 
poor might receive proper medical treatment. For 
more than twenty-five years he had made anatomy 
and "physic" the diversion of his "leisure hours." 
He wrote a book entitled "Primitive Physic," of 
which twenty-three editions were issued during his 
lifetime. It was not a fad with him, but grew out 
of his efforts for the relief of the poor. 

A writer in the Gloucester Times tells of a poor 
widow who consulted him about her daughter, who 
was in a rapid decline. Mr. Wesley visited her and 
treated her. The girl recovered, grew to strong 
womanhood, married, and her son became a skillful 
physician. After fifty years of successful practice 
he declared that he found Mr. Wesley's prescrip- 
tions and remedies the best he had used in his suc- 
cessful practice for more than half a century. 

Mr. Wesley's plan was to invite all sick persons, 



198 Life and Service. 

whether they belonged to the society or not, to come 
to him every Friday for such assistance as he could 
give them. During the first five months of his en- 
deavor to relieve the sick, which involved an expense 
of two hundred dollars, he cured five hundred. His 
medical venture was, therefore, by no means a 
failure, but a gratifying success. 

The Widows' Home. 

Mr. Wesley found in London many aged and fee- 
ble widows who were not sick, but who were unable 
to provide for themselves and who had no relatives 
or friends to provide for them. He undertook to 
care for them himself. He leased two houses near 
by, fitted them up, and made them clean and com- 
fortable, and they were soon filled with these grate- 
ful old souls, who were "widows indeed." A large 
part of the expense of this widows' home was met 
from the weekly contributions of the bands and the 
collections on the occasions of the sacrament of the 
Lord's Supper. 

Charity Schools. 

Mr. Wesley saw thousands of children of the 
poor living under vicious influences, whose parents 
were neither able to clothe them decently nor to pay 
for their tuition at school. He improvised schools 



John Wesley in Social Service. 199 

for them and gathered as many of them into these 
schools as he could. He was compelled to furnish 
many of them with adequate and proper clothing 
and had them taught and trained. And he observed 
that it was not long before there was gratifying 
improvement in these children. Rules were laid 
down for the government of them, and they were 
rigidly enforced: (1) The school hours were from 
6 to 12 a.m. and from 1 to 5 p.m. ; (2) there were 
no play days nor picnics for them ; (3) all the school 
had to attend the morning service and listen to a 
daily sermon; (4) the schools were supported by 
voluntary contributions. 

The Loan Bank. 

Mr. Wesley found many hard-working, self- 
respecting poor people who did not want alms, but 
frequently needed a little money for a few weeks 
to tide them over difficulties. There was no one to 
whom they could go to borrow a few shillings, ex- 
cept the pawnbroker, and that character differed 
little from our present-day loan shark. To go to 
him meant to be put out of business. Mr. Wesley 
studied the situation and at last devised a scheme to 
help these worthy poor men and women. He started 
this scheme in 1746. Not till about one hundred and 



200 Life and Service. 

fifty years later was a similar scheme begun by some 
philanthropic gentlemen in New York City. He 
began with a capital of thirty pounds and sixteen 
shillings, or a little more than one hundred and fifty 
dollars. During the first eighteen months he as- 
sisted two hundred and fifty-five persons. At first 
no one was allowed to< borrow more than five dollars 
at a time, which was afterwards increased to twenty- 
five dollars. The loan was to be paid back within 
three months in small weekly payments. Among the 
beneficiaries of this loan bank was a cobbler named 
James Lackington, who borrowed twenty-five dol- 
lars with which to start a secondhand bookstore in 
connection with his shoe shop. His book business 
grew so rapidly that he soon had to give up his shoe 
shop, and ultimately it became the largest second- 
hand bookstore in London. It made Lackington a 
rich man. The year Mr. Wesley died his profits 
amounted to twenty-five thousand dollars. 

Greater Organizations. 

Canon Farrar traces every great work of philan- 
thropy and social reformation to the impulse given 
to religion in England by John Wesley. Among the 
far-reaching movements he mentions : ( i ) The Brit- 
ish and Foreign Bible Society. (2) The Religious 



John Wesley in Social Service. 20 1 

Tract Society. (3) The London Missionary Soci- 
ety. (4) The Church Missionary Society. (5) 
The spread of religious instruction by weekly pe- 
riodicals. (6) He gave great attention to Sunday 
schools and the work of Robert Raikes. (7) He 
gave a great impulse both to national and technical 
education in starting the work of Silas Todd, the 
Foundry teacher. (8) He started in his own case 
the funeral reform when in his will he directed that 
at his obsequies there should be "no hearse, no es- 
cutcheon, no coach, and no pomp." 

Prison Reform. 

Mr. Wesley visited prisoners and, as we have al- 
ready observed, ameliorated the lot of prisoners long 
before the work of John Howard was begun and a 
century before the days of Elizabeth Fry. 

Mr. Wesley was antislavery in his sentiments and 
principles from the beginning of his long ministe- 
rial career; and when he was seventy years old he 
put to record his matured and deliberate convictions 
on the subject in a pamphlet of fifty-three pages, 
which was scattered broadcast by Methodist preach- 
ers both in Europe and America. This pamphlet 
made a profound impression, and we believe nothing 
ever written on the subject was more potential in 



202 Life and Service. 

creating sentiment against the slave trade and slav- 
ery. He described the sin of buying and selling the 
bodies and souls of men as "that execrable sum of 
all villainies/' He characterized the American slave 
trade as the "vilest that ever saw the sun." His last 
letter, to William Wilberforce about his parliamen- 
tary labors for the emancipation of slavery in the 
West Indies, was written only six days before he 
died. 

Industrial Slavery. 

Mr. Wesley described English peasants generally 
as debauched and as possessing no knowledge of 
God. They were utterly ignorant of what is meant 
by faith, repentance, holiness, or Bible religion, and 
he raised the question: "If religion is not in the head 
of the people, how can it be in the heart and life?" 
But wretched as was the condition of the peasant, 
it was much better than the degradation and hard- 
ship of the miner and the factory worker. He saw 
little children from four to five years old at work 
amid the darkness and horrors of the pit who never 
saw a ray of sunshine except on Sundays. He saw 
women employed as beasts of burden and with 
chains around their waists, crawling on their hands 
and knees through the narrow passages of the mines, 
drawing after them coal carriages. He saw girls 



John Wesley in Social Service. 203 

and women often carrying on their backs burdens 
weighing one hundred and fifty pounds, and he 
saw little children carrying coal creels weighing fifty 
pounds upstairs, which in the aggregate equaled an 
ascent of fourteen times a day to the summit of St. 
Paul's Cathedral. He saw other children who were 
daily required to work thirteen and fourteen hours 
pumping water from the mines and often standing 
in the water ankle-deep. He saw that the pay of 
these women and children was a mere pittance, 
which they were required to spend at the "truck 
store," where they were charged twenty-five per 
cent more than they would have had to pay else- 
where. He saw poorly fed men who were required 
to work thirteen and fourteen hours a day, the vic- 
tims of injustice and oppression, and among them 
rheumatism was almost universal and tuberculosis 
common. He saw that deaths from accidents were 
almost daily occurrences. 

Such, then, in brief, was the condition of the 
industrial world in the time of John Wesley. These 
things continued far into the nineteenth century, 
and all the abuses have by no means even yet been 
corrected. But there has been marked improvement, 
and large credit is due the nation-wide evangelism 
of John Wesley and the social reformation that he 



204 Life and Service. 

inaugurated at so many vital points to uplift and to 
redeem the masses. Among no class of laboring 
men has there been greater improvement than among 
the English miners. In fact, the miner has become 
a leader in the movement for bettering the condition 
of all classes of working people. He is a strong 
personality in the industrial world, and he is the 
pioneer in the labor movement. 

The miner's attachment to Methodism is of long 
standing in England, dating back to Wesley's per- 
sonal ministry among that neglected and oppressed 
class of laborers. Wesley found in this sturdy class 
a congenial soil for the planting of the seed of the 
gospel and for the reformation which he commenced 
in the line of social service. He planted the seed 
among a people traditionally religious, whose ances- 
tors had lived for centuries beneath the shadow of 
the monastery and who had been faithful to their 
ancient Church when king and Parliament assailed 
it and the ancient Church was stripped of its power 
and glory. These sullen children of Rome sank into 
a state of heathenism and death, where they con- 
tinued until Wesley broke their deathlike sleep. 
Since the time that his trumpet voice awoke them 
from their age-long slumber Methodism has become 
the dominant faith of the miners of old England. 



John Wesley in Social Service. 205 

With their awakening and conversion has come also 
the awakening of many gifts and graces in these 
sturdy sons of toil. To many has come the gift of 
tongues and the power of impassioned oratory. 
Many of them have answered the call to the Chris- 
tian ministry, and as itinerants and local preachers 
they have become leaders of social reform. Through 
these itinerant and local preachers Methodism has 
played no unimportant part in organizing the min- 
ers in contending for their rights and the rights of 
the common people in general. These men learned 
from Methodism not only the art of speaking, but 
they also learned the art of organization; and this 
education they have put to good use in their social 
agitations and reforms. 

There are no workmen in England so well organ- 
ized to-day as the miners, and none are better repre- 
sented in Parliament. Five members in the House 
of Commons who are miners have all been trained 
in the Methodist Church, and four of these are 
Methodist local preachers. Mr. Thomas Burt was 
elected to Parliament by a majority of three thou- 
sand in a constituency of four thousand. He was 
also elected President of the Miners' International 
Union and was the English delegate to the Berlin 
Labor Congress, which was called by the Emperor 



206 Life and Service. 

of Germany. With this Methodist miner his im- 
perial majesty took counsel at one of the state re- 
ceptions at the imperial palace. Mr. Burt assured 
the Emperor of Germany that breach of contract 
was practically unknown in England by miners, that 
now rioting seldom or never occurred among them, 
and that in England they had solved the problem by 
freedom. Mr. Burt is a Methodist, and his father 
before him was a Primitive Methodist local preach- 
er. Next to Mr. Burt as leader of organized labor 
in England is Mr. Joseph Arch, who is organizer 
and head of the Agricultural Laborers' Union, which 
has done more to improve the condition of the Eng- 
lish peasant than any other agency. Mr. Arch is a 
local Methodist preacher, and he became the leader 
of the peasants because of their confidence in him 
and his known ability as a speaker and an organizer. 
The first two Parliamentary Secretaries of the Brit- 
ish Traders' Congress were Methodists. Henry 
Broadhurst, a working stonemason, who became the 
first workingman to hold a cabinet position in the 
English government, though not a full member of 
the Wesleyan Church, is actively identified with the 
educational and other important work of the 
Church ; and in his house and with his cooperation 
was started the Methodist Times, one of the leading 



John Wesley in Social Service. 207 

Church papers in England. Among the Methodist 
laymen and local preachers who are prominently 
identified with the British labor movement is Charles 
Fenwick, who was a coal heaver when elected to 
Parliament, but he possessed such ability that he 
was appointed Parliamentary Secretary of the Brit- 
ish Traders' Congress. 

The labor movement is more marked by religious 
leadership in England than in any country in the 
world, and it is largely due to the influence of Meth- 
odist laymen and local preachers in their organiza- 
tions. If John Wesley had stopped Thomas Max- 
field, that sturdy layman, from preaching, the result 
would obviously have been vastly different in the re- 
ligious, social, and political history not only of Eng- 
land, but also of the United States and of the world. 
It is clear that the distinctively regulative ideas of 
English labor are religious rather than secular and 
selfish, and this is largely due to Methodist influ- 
ences. 

No great strike has occurred in England in recent 
years in which the workers have not found friends 
and champions among the leading Methodist minis- 
ters. Notable among these were Hugh Price 
Hughes and Mark Guy Pearse. The striking coal 
miners a few years ago and the workmen from the 



208 Life and Service. 

slate quarries of Lord Perrhyn later sent delega- 
tions to London to solicit aid for the suffering men 
and their families; and these delegations were in 
both instances provided for in Methodist homes, and 
arrangements were made for them to present their 
cause from Methodist pulpits. That consideration 
was made possible because there was. born in Eng- 
land two hundred years ago a man named John 
Wesley. 

It must be confessed that the spiritual descendants 
of Wesley on this side of the water have not been 
as faithful to the oppressed laboring class as have 
been the Wesleyan Methodists in England, and in 
consequence the Methodist Church in America has 
distinctly lost its grip and power over the masses 
of the working people. We are still living in the 
midst of colossal evils — commercial, industrial, and 
social — and we know what John Wesley would do 
were he here. We know that he would labor with 
his brain and his pen and his voice and his hands to 
relieve the situation and to emancipate men, women, 
and children from all forms of industrial slavery. 
Let us, then, as his descendants, advance to the task. 
On with the social reformation, for much remains 
yet to be done ! 



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